
Class _., 

Book i_ 



Copyright^ ' 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



I 



THE FUNDAMENTALS 

AND 

THEIR CONTRASTS 



BY JAMES M. BUCKLEY, D.D. 



THE QUILLIAN LECTURES 

FOR 1 90s 

DELIVERED IN THI CHAPEL OF EMORY COLLIGI 



Nashville, Tenn. ; Dallas, Tex. 

Publishing House or the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 

Smith & Lamar, Agents 

1906 



1 *«\5* 



LIBRARY of COMGRESS 
Two CoDie? Rf»rf tvnd 

MAY 28 1906 

* Copyright Entry 
C^ASS (2/ ftXc, No. 
COPY B. ' 



Copyrighted by 

Emory College, Oxford, Ga. 

1906. 



THE QUILLIAN LECTURESHIP. 

On June 4, 1897, the Board of Trustees of Emory 
College, Oxford, Ga., received a communication from 
the Rev. W. F. Quillian, proposing to found a lecture- 
ship at Emory College, to which, with a view of raising 
a fund of $25,000, he made a substantial gift, which has 
been added to by others. 

The conditions of the gift were that the lecturer 
should be elected by the Board of Trustees from three 
names nominated by the Faculty from among the min- 
isters of the Methodist Episcopal Churches in the 
United States; or, if desirable in the judgment of the 
said Board of Trustees and the income would allow, 
the services of Methodists from any other part of the 
world might be secured. The lecturer so selected shall 
be at liberty to choose his subject, or subjects, within 
the range of apologetical, doctrinal, exegetical, pastoral, 
and historical theology; the course of lectures to be de- 
livered before the Faculty and students of Emory Col- 
lege at such time and place as the authorities of the 
college may designate. Provided, also, that the manu- 
scripts of the lectures shall be the property of Emory 
College, and that any profits which may arise from the 
publication of them shall be added to this fund. 

The trust having been gratefully accepted by the 
Board of Trustees, Bishop Charles B. Galloway, D.D., 

(in) 



iv The Quillian Lectureship. 

LL.D., was chosen lecturer for the year 1898, and 
March 22-27 delivered a course on "Christianity and 
the American Commonwealth. " The second course 
was delivered by Bishop E. R. Hendrix, D.D., LL.D., 
in April, 1903, his subject being "The Personality of the 
Holy Spirit." The third series of lectures, delivered 
in March, 1905, by the Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D., LL.D., 
Editor of The Christian Advocate, New York, consti- 
tutes this volume. 



CONTENTS. 

FAG* 

Religions and Religion I 

II. 
No God 31 

III. 

Many Gods or One 63 

IV. 
Inspiration and Revelation 87 

V. 
False and Distorted Forms of Christianity 115 

VI. 
The Indestructibility of Christianity 173 

Index 201 

(v) 



I. 

RELIGIONS AND RELIGION. 



I. 

RELIGIONS AND RELIGION. 

The purpose of the Quillian Foundation pri- Divergent 

. . . views of the 

manly is to promote the intellectual compre- p resen t a /re 
hension and acceptance of the Christian religion. 
To fulfill this purpose, it is necessary for those 
who deliver the courses of lectures which it 
provides to discern the special need of the age 
and attempt to meet it. But this in performance 
is not as simple as it may seem in statement; 
for at once the question arises, What is the spe- 
cial intellectual and religious need of the age ? 

A few years ago Dr. Henry van Dyke, then 
pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in the 
city of New York, now professor in Princeton 
University, and lately Moderator of the General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, delivered 
a series of sermons, later published in a book 
bearing the title, "The Gospel for an Age of 
Doubt." Believing doubt to be peculiarly a 
characteristic of the present time, he prepared 
the discourses with the design of leading the 

(3) 



4 The Fundamentals 

conscientious doubter into the green pastures 
and beside the still waters of Faith. But his 
view of the age and its need was not satisfac- 
tory to Dr. Amory H. Bradford, a distinguished 
Congregational pastor, and recently Moderator 
of the National Council of Congregational 
Churches, who a little later published a volume 
containing a series of sermons designed to meet 
believers who needed to be led into paths of 
righteousness and peace. He entitled his book 
"The Age of Faith." 

Whatever may be true as to the special char- 
acteristic of this age respecting general doubt 
and faith, it is certain that from the earliest 
times they have coexisted in every nation. 
Mutations of The sacred writings of all religions contain 
faith and passages whose direct affirmation or implication 

doubt. 11-1 1 

cannot be explained except upon the assumption 
that believers were liable to temptation to doubt, 
and that there were many avowed skeptics and 
open unbelievers. The Greek and Roman clas- 
sics, historical, poetical, or philosophical, abound 
in evidences of existing doubt expressed in many 
forms. The prophetic writings of the Jews, the 
Psalms, and especially the Book of Ecclesiastes, 
show that among them all fundamental princi- 



And Their Contrasts. 5 

pies of religion as well as the authorized docu- 
ments were called in question, and in some 
instances the identity of the authors of reigning 
religions, not only among the Jews, but among 
the nations to which they were intimately re- 
lated. 

History also shows that methods of combat- 
ing or dissipating doubt have frequently in- 
creased it. Consciousness of power, develop- 
ing an imperious spirit, righteous indignation, 
aroused by attacks upon one's most precious 
beliefs, fear of the undermining of one's offices, 
honors, and emoluments, and the nobler appre- 
hension that public and private morality would 
be corrupted, combined to produce a state of 
feeling which could discern no good in any 
proposition for change, and could imagine only 
evil, and that continually, in those who disputed 
the words of priests. The connection of eccle- 
siastical with civil governemnt, whereby each 
tacitly agreed to support the other, increased the 
tendency to extreme views and stimulated actions 
calculated to transform honest doubt into all- 
inclusive unbelief. 

Also doubt, becoming total unbelief, has often 
abandoned itself to such excesses as to provoke 



6 The Fundamentals 

a reaction to faith. This, being strictly in har- 
mony with human nature, has always followed, 
and may always be expected. Nevertheless, the 
public and private interests of mankind will ever 
cause a majority to abhor extremes. Apathy 
may follow the excesses of unbelief, in which 
case established religion may again flourish, with 
coexisting fanaticisms; or there may be a sud- 
den reaction, which, while preventing some evils, 
may for centuries act as a brake upon the wheels 
of genuine progress. 

Without determining whether faith or doubt 
predominates, I regard the present time as pe- 
culiar in that the Fundamentals of Religion have 
been openly questioned, or attenuated to nothing, 
in quarters where, until recently, they had not 
been so treated. 
Portentous Heretofore, — except where there has been a 

character!*. revo i t f rom a n religion, — controversies within 

tic of pres- 
ent time, the pale of Christianity have related to the degree 

of inspiration of the sacred writings, the person 
of Christ, metaphysical questions concerning the 
Trinity, subordinate points of theology with re- 
spect to the Atonement, the laws of the natural 
universe, including the origin of present forms 
and the conditions of the future life, and similar 



And Their Contrasts. 7 

inquiries; both parties to every controversy ac- 
cepting the principles fundamental to all religion. 
But within a few decades these essentials have 
been placed in the crucible by various experi- 
menters, who have brought forth and exhibited 
for the acceptance of the mind of the age, not 
pure crystals, but an amalgam unlike Christian- 
ity, or even the "Natural Religion" which phi- 
losophers of two centuries ago offered as a sub- 
stitute for organized Christianity. 

The purpose of this course of lectures is to Aim of this 
present these fundamentals, with their contrasts. e °* 

lectures. 

This task is undertaken in the belief that if the 
fundamentals can be stated with absolute clear- 
ness, and the alternatives sharply defined, the 
foundations of religion in general, and of Chris- 
tianity in particular, will be recognized and ac- 
cepted by all except "a few minds of a peculiar 
structure." It is self-evident that no progress 
can be made in such an undertaking unless there 
be first and always a clear idea of religion and 
man's relation to it. 

The subject of this lecture is, "Religions and 
Religion." The first problem is whether reli- 
gion is natural to man. 

The most obvious proof that man has a reli- 



8 The Fundamentals 

Universality gious nature is the fact that no tribe has been 
of re igio7> f ounc j without religion. This is now granted by 
practically all ethnologists. Disputes as to the 
fact did not involve the affirmation that any one 
of the great races of mankind, or even that any 
considerable number of tribes, however degraded, 
could be found without religion. But for a long 
time it was held that some tribes, the least devel- 
oped in most respects, were devoid of such con- 
ceptions as the most rudimentary religion would 
require. But a closer acquaintance — an anal- 
ysis of their thoughts, and especially the scien- 
tific study of their customs, dealing with their 
origin and meaning — has shown that they have 
some form of tribal government, and also some 
concrete conception of powers above themselves 
from whom they hope or whom they fear, and 
may displease or placate. This conception is the 
basal idea of all religion. 

It is as natural that man should be religious, 
and active therein, as that he should desire proper- 
ty, wish to defend his rights, love his friends, and 
dislike or hate his foes, have pride in his country, 
desire to acquire knowledge, to gratify his impul- 
ses, or try to express to others his thoughts and 
feelings by speech, signs, or writing. 



And Their Contrasts. 9 

There exist many religions either wholly false, Power of re- 
grievously oppressive, or superstitious in that they tgt ° n% 
assign supernatural causes for natural effects; 
yet the majority of such imperfect or essentially 
evil religions have existed for thousands of years, 
and still enchain successive generations. When 
the multiplicity, diversity, power, and perma- 
nence of these systems are contemplated, they 
become an invincible demonstration of the reli- 
gious nature of man. Many of them exercise 
absolute control over the lives and liberties of 
their devotees. They have controlled govern- 
ments, conquered nations, and destroyed antag- 
onistic forms of civilization. In most lands they 
are mightier than all political organizations. 

After a strange career of oppression and inter- 
nal commotion, Russia is now upheld by the 
Russo-Greek Church, which has been able to 
check reform, yet without which no real and 
permanent reform can be made. Within the 
past three decades, when the antagonism of the 
world against the Turks was more intense than 
it had been for a long period, and the sultan, 
pressed beyond endurance, was making conces- 
sion after concession, suddenly the joint hands 
of the Powers relaxed, and mingled wails and 



io The Fundamentals 

howls of disappointment were heard around the 
globe. Numerous theories of the cause were 
bruited ; at last, in an historic debate in the par- 
liament of one of the great nations, it was broad- 
ly hinted by the premier that the sultan had 
uttered the portentous words, "I will awake the 
spirit of Islam." This neither England nor 
France nor Russia was willing to hazard. It 
is beyond reasonable doubt that no civil gov- 
ernment could stand which should array itself 
against all religion, or against the established 
religions, or the prevailing religion where it has 
a general hold upon the people. In the most 
powerful period of the Roman Empire, when it 
included nearly a thousand nations under its 
sway, it was not able to compel its subjected peo- 
ples to relinquish their ancestral faiths. All 
were permitted to worship their own gods, after 
their own manner: but whoever established a 
new religion, if of the nobility, was to be ban- 
ished; if of the common people, put to death. 
So long as the Roman power supposed Chris- 
tianity to be a sect of the Jews, its disciples 
were not persecuted. But when it was per- 
ceived that the Jews were opposing it, the Ro- 
man government assuming that whatever it 



And Their Contrasts. n 

might have been in the beginning it had devel- 
oped into a new religion, under this law perse- 
cutions began. 

Religions, whether good or bad, derive their 
power from the fact that all races of mankind 
will have religion, true or false. 

The religious nature is illustrated in the in- inconsisten* 
consistencies of the worst of men, of whom com- ctes °^ a ' 

ba?idoned 

paratively few can entirely emancipate them- mejlt si ^. 
selves from the power of religious convictions, ntjkant. 
Although men, when dominated by their passions, 
may exhibit brutality and an apparently innate 
bent to wickedness, to a degree appalling even 
to those not scrupulously moral nor sympathetic 
with religion, on other occasions they sink pros- 
trate in penitence; and, where no motive can be 
assigned for hypocrisy, assume for a time the 
duties of the most laborious devotion. Under 
the Christian system, experienced priests, par- 
sons, or ministers are never surprised by such 
manifestations. On the contrary, they have 
learned to expect that the bolder the deniers of 
religion, or the more blasphemous their scoffings, 
the sooner they may appear among earnest in- 
quirers. Similar transitions take place under 
religions other than Christian. 



12 The Fundamentals 

Human na- Close observation of those supposed to be en- 
ture uncon- t j re jy beyond the reach of personal religion fre- 

sciously re- 
vealing its quently detects in their deeds, ways of looking 

need of a a { subjects, and modes of feeling, convincing evi- 

religion, r , . 

dence of the religious nature, lhe conscious 
weakness of some leads them to seek strength 
in the thought of supernatural power, and the 
success of others produces a similar effect. Men 
who declare that "fate" is against them, and 
others who, not able to account upon strictly 
natural principles for their own amazing suc- 
cess, speak of their "destiny" or their "star," 
are unmistakably, although unconsciously, re- 
sorting to one of the essential elements of reli- 
gion in order to explain the mystery of their 
own careers. Those who have failed, and sol- 
ace themselves with the idea that "fate" is 
against them, find meager consolation in the 
sense of irresponsibility. 

While this is sometimes called a "manifestation 
of the religious spirit," and men who have this 
and nothing more are improperly characterized 
as "religious," they show the existence of needs 
and cravings which only a religion could ade- 
quately meet. Frequently late in life they have 
become devout and trustful ; and among the most 



Death the 



gious teach' 
er. 



And Their Contrasts. 13 

effective defenses and impressive delineations of 
true religion have been the works of such as 
had long modified their reasonings and sought 
to allay their grief and to silence their misgiv- 
ings by vague surmisings of impersonal powers. 

All human beings are brought into the pres- 
ence of death by two equally terrible facts: be- most po™- 
reavement and the consciousness of their own er ^ tl reh " 
inevitable approach to the unknown. In either 
of these minutes, hours, days, or years of soul 
anguish, their cry, with or without language, is 
to some Power which may illuminate the dark- 
ness by a sign of love ; some indication of favor, 
or promise of deliverance. In all lands death is 
a more impressive teacher than any priest. As 
death always results from disease, violence, or 
old age, its constant warnings and the dreadful 
uncertainty which attends life create a situation 
in which mind and heart alike reach out into the 
universe for a helping hand and listen for a "still, 
small voice" of hope and consolation. 

Religious biography, Christian or non-Chris- 
tian, current or stored in the great libraries of 
this or other ages, affords conclusive evidence 
that the impression that one must die, intensified 
by the departure of those whose continuous ex- 



14 The Fundamentals 

istence seemed necessary to the happiness and to 
the very life of those left behind, is one of the 
most powerful causes of sudden reformations, 
and of a steady increase of devotional feeling; 
and of attention to the principles and the actions 
which the common faith or a belief wrought out 
for themselves invests with power of preparation 
for the unknown in the life which now is, and 
in that which is to come. 

It is frequently intimated that the influence of 
death and "bereavement in concentrating men's 
thoughts upon religion has practically ceased. 
Those who take this view are somewhat misled 
by the changes in public methods of appeal and in 
the manifestation of religious feeling. Such as are 
most successful in persuading men depend, not 
wholly upon public appeals and the influence of 
concourses, but upon sacred private conversa- 
tions. These, and those who analyze their own 
thoughts and without dissipating self-scrutiny rec- 
ognize the feelings which arise within them, know 
that the certainty of death and the uncertainty 
of its time, place, and manner are still among 
the most potent influences which draw men to 
the contemplation of their relation to God and 
to their fellow-men. 



And Their Contrasts. 15 

The inability of man to account for his own The necessity 
existence or that of the material universe, would ^ a 

gion. 

naturally engender in every mind capable of con- 
secutive thought some theory, however crude, 
to explain the mystery; and it may be assumed 
that a majority of the people in any age would 
resort to the hypothesis of some Power greater 
than man. Having admitted such a view, the 
logical conclusion and the equally natural feeling 
would be that it will be wise to seek every 
means to secure or maintain the friendship of 
that Power. Hope would be sustained by such 
an effort; and fear would haunt him who be- 
lieved in that Power but neglected to propitiate it. 

Occasionally exceptions to every general order 
will occur. Thus there are men who testify that 
they never had a religious desire, fear, or hope. 
But they are not more numerous than those who 
never experience filial or paternal love, or than 
those from birth essentially misanthropic or crim- 
inally inclined. 

Analysis will show that congenital defects, 
unusual environment, or physical or mental 
shocks in childhood, will account for such ab- 
normal peculiarities. Pride also leads some to 
affirm a hardihood or destitution of religious feel- 



1 6 The Fundamentals 

ing which is not true to their experience. This 
has been confessed in later years by men once 
wholly insensible but who have become pro- 
foundly religious. 

The evidence is complete that normal man has 
a nature capable of, and inclined to, religious be- 
lief ; and that if it is not furnished him, he will 
invent it for himself. 

Divergent Definitions of Religion. 

Ancient deri> From 'ancient times the derivation of the word 
"religion" has been disputed. The earlier view 
attributed its derivation to the word relegere, "to 
go through or over again in speech, reading, or 
thought." Hence, according to Cicero, it meant 
"to revere the gods." This was a figurative use ; 
but the same word in the literal is thought by 
some to have been its origin, in which case it 
means, "to gather again, to collect; and conse- 
quently stands for religions formulas" Accord- 
ing to Lactantius and Augustine, it is derived 
from religare, "to bind back, as an obligation." 
This is the prevalent view in the modern world. 
This difference of etymology justifies the com- 
ment of "The Century Dictionary": "Words of 
religious use are especially liable to lose their 



And Their Contrasts. 17 

literal meaning, and to take on the aspect of 
sacred primitives, making it difficult to trace, 
or possibly to prove, their origin, meaning, or 
formation." 

The Century's first defintion is comprehensive : The centu- 
"The recognition of, and allegiance in manner ry * s $ rst 

and third 

of life to, a superhuman power or powers, to definitions. 
whom allegiance and service are regarded as 
justly due." This definition, however, applies 
only to the highest form of civilization. Under 
this definition, the same authority quotes from 
James Martineau's "A Study of Religion" : "By 
religion I understand the belief and worship of 
Supreme Mind and Will directing the universe 
and holding moral relations with human life." 
It also quotes from Cardinal Newman : "By reli- 
gion I mean the knowledge of God, of his Will, 
and of our duties to him." Another is taken 
from "The Faiths of the World": "Religion is 
the communion between a worshiping subject 
and a worshiped object, — communion of a man 
with what he believes to be a god." 

The Century's third definition is : "Any system 
or faith in and worship of a divine being or be- 
ings." This signification is seen in Acts xxvi. 
5, "After the most straitest sect of our religion 
2 



tions di- 
verge. 



1 8 The Fundamentals 

I lived a Pharisee" ; Galatians i. 13, "Conversa- 
tion in time past in the Jews' religion" ; Galatians 
i. 14, "Profited in the Jews' religion." 
why defini- For a long period prior to the middle of the 
last century, the definitions given of religion were 
chiefly based upon Christianity, and often limited 
to the view point of the originator of the defi- 
nition. Professor Edmund Buckley, of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, emphasizes in the Encyclo- 
pedia Apiericana, the difference by stating that 
definitions "vary according to whether they rec- 
ognize the lowest and highest forms of religion, 
or exclude the former." A definition which in- 
eludes all must be one of this type: "Religion is 
the belief in and worship of supersensuous and 
superhuman beings." In that definition the term 
"supersensuous" denotes both personified nature 
powers and dead human souls. "This belief in 
and worship of a supersensuous and superhuman 
being," that is, a god, "whether it were tree god, 
storm god, or sole god, became, when defined and 
established, a creed and a cult, the latter being 
worshiped by offering, prayer, dance, and like 
ceremonies." 

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
(Vol. VIII., page 623), the ethnological definition 



And Their Contrasts. 19 

of religion is this : "Religion is the feeling which definitions in 
falls upon man in the presence of the unknown." c i ofiadia 
The accuracy of this definition, though presented Britannica. 
upon high authority, is open to grave doubt. But 
its author makes this use of it : "Man personifies 
the unknown. When his mind is strongly ex- 
cited, he cannot do otherwise ; and that personifi- 
cation he seeks to propitiate." Were this defi- 
nition so inclusive as to read, "Religion is a 
feeling which falls upon man in the presence of 
the unknown with sufficient force to lead him 
to personify the unknown, and seek to propitiate 
it," it might cover rudimentary religious faith 
and worship. 

Another definition in the Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica (Vol. VII., page 334) is this : "Religion, 
in general, is a relation between man and God, 
and it may be either natural or supernatural. 
Divine religion is essentially the establishment of 
a right relation between man and God." This 
seems imperfect, and confuses philosophy and 
religion. 

Flint's definition is this : "Religion is a man's a group of 
belief in a being or beings mightier than himself de fi nit *°™. 
and inaccessible to his senses but not indifferent 
to his sentiments and actions, with the feelings 



20 The Fundamentals 

and practices which flow from such belief." 
This is too exalted to include some of the lower 
religions, in which certain gods are hot "inac- 
cessible to the senses" and also some forms of 
higher religions. 

The following is from Andrew Lang, in 
"Myth, Ritual, and Religion": Religion is "a 
belief in a primal being, a Maker, undying, 
usually moral ; — without denying that a belief in 
spiritual beings, even if immoral, may be styled 
religious." 

Dr. J. D. Lang wrote concerning the native 
races of Australia, "They have nothing whatever 
of the character of religion, or of religious ob- 
servances, to distinguish them from the beasts 
that perish." Yet Dr. Lang published evidence 
in the same book assigning to the natives belief 
in "Turramullun, the chief of demons, who is 
the author of disease, mischief, and wisdom." 
Commenting on this, Andrew Lang observed that 
a belief in a superhuman author of "disease, mis- 
chief, and wisdom" is certainly a religious belief 
not conspicuously held by the beasts ; and in 
the Appendix of Dr. Lang's book, written by 
the Rev. Mr. Ridley, appears this conclusive evi- 
dence : "Those who have learned that God is the 



And Their Contrasts. 21 

name by which we speak of the Creator, say that 
Baiame is God/' Lang maintains, and justly, 
that people who "believe in beings unconditioned 
by time, space, or death" are religious. 

The second definition given by the Century 
is, "Healthful development and right life of the 
spiritual nature, as contrasted with that of the 
mere intellectual and social powers." And to 
illustrate, it takes an example of this use from 
the English martyr Latimer: "For religion, pure Latimer, 
religion I say, standeth not in wearing a monk's Mat ^ew 

Arnold, 

cowl, but in righteousness, justice, and well- Darwin, 
doing." And from Matthew Arnold this: "Re- and 
ligion, if we follow the intention of human 
thought and human language in the use of 
the word, is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up 
by feeling; the passage from morality to reli- 
gion is made when to morality is applied emo- 
tion." 

Darwin defines religious devotion as, "A high- 
ly complex feeling, consisting of love, complete 
submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, 
a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, 
gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps oth- 
er elements." He was attempting to describe an 
experience apparently foreign to his nature; yet 



haustible. 



22 The Fundamentals 

the definition includes the essential elements of 
religion. 

Trench remarks that "Religion [was] not, as 
too often now, used as equivalent for godliness; 
. . . it expressed the outer form and embodi- 
ment which the inward spirit of a true or a false 
devotion assumed. " 
The list mex- There are many other definitions. The word 
is used for the rites and services of religion and 
for the practice of such rites and ceremonies; 
and occasionally, particularly by Shakespeare, as 
a sense of "obligation/' where men are urged to 
keep a contract "religiously"; also, it has an- 
other signification in the phrase "experimental 
religion." 

There is a use of the word in the New Testa- 
ment which has deceived many who are igno- 
rant of the form of rhetoric where a part is put 
for the whole, or mistaken for it, as in the pas- 
sages, "Pure religion ... is this, To visit 
the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and 
to keep himself unspotted from the world" ; and 
"If any man among you seem to be religious, 
and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his 
own heart, this man's religion is vain." 

The variety of significations which the word 



And Their Contrasts. 23 

"religion" bears is further illustrated by the fact 
that in current literature it is frequently applied 
solely to the ecclesiastical part of religion, or to 
the doctrinal part, or to the emotional quality as 
distinguished from the devotional; while by oth- 
ers still it is made equivalent to devotion. 

One noted writer has recently defined religion 
as "morality"; another declares him to be a 
thoroughly religious man who "accepts all that 
science reveals of the operations of nature, 
whether he acknowledges the personality of God 
or admits the existence of any transcendental 
being, personal or otherwise." 

A recent writer claims to have tabulated elev- 
en hundred definitions of religion. John Morley, 
the unequaled contemporary essayist, has said: 
"To hurry to define is rash. If we want a plati- 
tude, there is nothing like a definition. Perhaps 
most definitions hang between platitude and 
paradox. There are said to be ten thousand 
definitions of religion. Poetry may count al- 
most as many, and liberty or happiness hardly 
fewer." 

The foregoing have been selected as types of 
the more prevalent definitions. But recently 
many of them have been modified, reconstructed> 



24 The Fundamentals 

or remanded to the ever-swelling lists of the obso- 
lescent or the obsolete. 

The "Scientific Study of Religion." 

The scientific study of religion, technically a 
modern process, is important, but like the scien- 
tific study of life leads to an unfathomable abyss. 
It is assumed to be certain that had there been 
no revelation to primitive man, some form of reli- 
gion would have been invented, and that at first 
it would have been taught by symbols and myths ; 
for "nature would have furnished the occasion 
for nature worship, and man himself for ances- 
try worship." Abundant evidence exists that 
nothing which man could not understand, but 
which was supposed to be more powerful than 
he, has failed to receive worship from him. 
Analogies be- Religion, except in the least civilized tribes, 
tween civil canno j- long exist without being wrought into 

and ecclesi' 

astkai de- some form or system. It has been emphasized 
veiopments. by various writers that in this respect the prog- 
ress of religion is similar to that of civil govern- 
ment, which always develops a ruling class. 
But a ruling class is invariably based on "inher- 
itance, conquest, or some form of voluntary 
. choice." If the fruits of conquest remain be- 



And Their Contrasts. 25 

yond the lives of the conquerors, to perpetuate 
the depository of power, it becomes hereditary. 
Hence it may be affirmed that hereditary or elect- 
ive rulers exist everywhere, and this is true of 
all organized religions. Unless such rulers pos- 
sessed infinite perfections, among them would 
spring up men dominated by the generic passions 
of love of dominion, wealth, ostentation, and the 
desire for recognition of their superiority, to be 
exhibited in deference, submission, and in cere- 
monies which in process of time, under these 
conditions, introduced many things not essen- 
tial to religion; and some hostile to it would ap- 
pear necessary for the control of the organiza- 
tion and the maintenance of artificial rights. 
Thus the nonessential would assume proportions 
of unreal magnitude and obscure or dwarf the 
essential. 

Rites and ceremonies would be increased and 
become more elaborate, a degree of subjection 
fatal to self-respect be required, and by hyper- 
conscientious or sensitive votaries be cultivated. 

It was long ago learned by experience and 
observation (and is in effect recorded in various 
languages and expressed in proverbs, occasional- 
ly in the quintessence of satire, usually with the 



26 The Fundamentals 

symbols of the shepherd fleecing the sheep) that 
the material possessions of devotees would be 
considered the lawful prey of the hierarchy ; and 
the people would be led to contribute them as a 
means of penance, and through penance as a 
means of salvation. 

As it is impossible infallibly to read the hu- 
man heart, it would be easy without suspicion 
of their motives for priests or rulers, civil or 
ecclesiastical, to introduce into religion require- 
ments primarily intended for the aggrandize- 
ment of officials. Those who submit to them, 
not being able to discern this sinister purpose, 
would make every effort to comply, under the 
belief that the action is necessary to their salva- 
tion, or the only means of relieving them from 
some threatened suffering. 
Reiatioji of On this subject it is admirably said by Saba- 
jaise reh- t j er . « j t j g nQt ^ pj ous f rau d that produces 

gions to re- 
ligion, the religion ; it is the religion that gives occasion 

and opportunity to pious frauds. Without reli- 
gion there would have been no pious frauds. 
When I hear it said, 'Priests made religion/ I 
simply ask, 'And who, pray, made the priests?' 
In order to create a priesthood, and in order that 
that invention might find general acceptance 



And Their Contrasts. 27 

with the people that were to be subject to it, 
must there not have been already in the hearts 
of men religious sentiments that would clothe the 
institution with a sacred character? The terms 
must be reversed: it is not priesthood that ex- 
plains religion, but religion that explains priest- 
hood." 

According to Professor Buckley, in the article summary oj 
before mentioned, "No religion is false and none 
reducible to the other" To the second member 
of that statement no objection can be adduced, 
but the former, unless qualified, cannot be cor- 
rect. That every religion may contain some 
truth is not only possible, but probable ; and there- 
fore it may be said that "no religion is [wholly] 
false," but many religions are self-contradictory. 
It is self-evident that any religion which con- 
tradicts the truth or itself is false in its teach- 
ings upon the proposition wherein it contradicts 
the truth, and on one side or the other wherein 
it contradicts itself. 

Under all religions the mass of mankind have 
believed in some form of future life, although 
not all have believed in immortality. Among the 
hypotheses elucidated by the scientific study of 
religion is this: myths were invented to satisfy 



28 The Fundamentals 

the mind of the truth of what was real in its 
consciousness. These ideas can be found by 
analyzing any religion capable of being system- 
atized. In some less is made of the future life 
than in others; and a vast difference of view is 
apparent with respect to the mode of life after 
death. But the supremacy of the gods, and the 
chastisements they inflict, either as purifications 
or punishments, are emphasized. 

The consciousness of freedom is at the basis of 
penalties and rewards. If an object of worship 
be accepted, the duty of worship is self-evident. 
comprehend The legitimate inference from these considera- 

sive defini' . , , . . . . . . • 

tionofreii- ^ 10ns 1S ti 13 * religion consists in a recognition of 
gion. Powers beyond and above man, that is, super- 

natural ; that these Powers created man, and up- 
hold the present system of things ; that they are 
to be worshiped and obeyed ; that man is free to 
worship and obey or not to do so, and therefore 
is subject to punishment if he displeases, and 
sure of reward if he pleases, his god or gods, 
both in this life and hereafter. 

In this sense, and in no other, can it be truly 
said that the "essentials of all religions are the 
same." 

The distinctions among religions, therefore, 



And Their Contrasts. 29 

relate to the number of supernatural Powers, to Distinctions 
the modes of worship supposed to be accept- among re ~ 
able to the god or gods, to the laws which 
are acknowledged as coming from supernatural 
sources, the conditions of forgiveness, the num- 
ber and character of intercessors, the duties, 
privileges, and effects of prayer, the conception 
of supernatural control, the existence of sacred 
books, the use or non-use of idols, and the des- 
tiny of man after death. 

But in some religions essentials are so com- 
pounded with baseless conceptions and degrad- 
ing practices that their influence is directly cor- 
rupting, or so antagonistic to virtue that votaries 
are little benefited by devotion. 

When "religions" are referred to, the word How the 
signifies the essentials of the various systems of w ° r 

° gions" and 

worship and service of supernatural beings or "religion" 
a supernatural being which are to be compared are used m 

these lee- 

or contrasted. But unless these systems, or one tureSt 
of them, is meant, the word "religion" is in- 
tended to signify not primarily a profession, an 
inheritance, a racial connection, an observance 
of traditional customs, or an intellectual belief, 
but the union of feeling with conviction and a 
life consistent with both. 



II. 

NO GOD. 



II. 

NO GOD. 

Notwithstanding the fact that a majority 
of mankind have believed in the existence of 
many gods, or of one, there have always been 
those who doubted, and a number large in the 
aggregate who affirmed their disbelief in the 
existence of supernatural beings, finite or in- 
finite. To them the universe is a machine of 
which man is merely a part. Among the popu- 
lations of the ancient world there were always 
atheists, and the writings of some of the most 
distinguished have descended to our own times; 
others have been mentioned and quoted in reli- 
gious or philosophical controversy. 

Atheism. 
Few words have been more variously applied r*™*** °f 

. . meaning 

than atheism ; yet there is substantial agree- f t h e term 
ment in the proposition that it has always been atheist. 
applied to the denial of the popular conception 
of God. In Greece "atheist" meant "one who 
denied the gods, more particularly those recog- 
3 (33) 



34 The Fundamentals 

nized by the state." It was on this ground that 
Socrates was charged with being an atheist. 
Pagans called Christians "atheists" as a term of 
reproach, because they denied the heathen gods 
and despised the services in the temples. The 
word was popularly used much as was "infidel" 
in England and in the United States a hundred 
years ago. 
Bacon on Thomas Paine was popularly called "an athe- 

ist," whereas at all times he avowed his belief 
in one Godf In his sixteenth essay Lord Bacon 
recognizes the fact that all who impugn the re- 
ceived religion or superstition are by the adverse 
part branded with the name "atheists." In his 
essay "Of Atheism" he gives as its causes : "Di- 
visions in religion, if there be many ; for any one 
main division addeth zeal to both sides ; but many 
divisions introduce atheism. Another is, scandal 
of priests; ... a third is, custom of pro- 
fane scoffing in holy matters; which doth by 
little and little deface the reverence of religion. 
And lastly, learned times, specially with peace 
and prosperity; for troubles and adversities do 
more bow men's minds to religion." However 
much we may differ from an established religion, 
no one who professes to believe in a personal, 



to atheism. 



And Their Contrasts. 35 

self-conscious, spiritual God can rightly be de- 
scribed as "atheist." Yet honest men of a prac- Temptations 
tical turn, speculating upon the being of God, 
may be embarrassed by the present scheme of 
things. From reason and a study of the mate- 
rial universe, they cannot demonstrate a future 
state beyond doubt. They find the human body 
to depend for its continued existence upon the 
change of particles, and in course of time the 
spring of that change gradually grows weak, 
after which the most scrupulous attention to 
hygiene adds but a small fraction to the duration 
of human life. To prove indubitably, as other 
facts or theories are demonstrated by induction 
or deduction, the existence of an inherently im- 
mortal soul or spirit has been found impossible. 
The maladies to which men are subject are 
painful ; the operation of climate in most parts of 
the world is such as prematurely to exhaust 
one's energies, and the possibility of contagion 
through air, earth, and water always exists. 
Equally disturbing is the fact that the strongest 
instincts of mankind are often contradicted by 
the disregard manifested by Nature, which 
after making promises to parents breaks them 
by ruthlessly destroying their offspring, or re- 



3$ The Fundamentals 

moves by similar means, frequently after excru- 
ciating suffering, the head of the family, and 
leaves the widow and the fatherless to irreme- 
diable mental and physical anguish. 

Throughout the course of human history 
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tidal waves 
have made no distinction between virtue and 
vice; and while in the heart there is a longing 
for life, there is also in the mind of man the 
knowledge that he must die. The honest and 
conscientious are frequently found suffering the 
pangs of poverty throughout life, while those 
who oppress them live in luxury and are hon- 
ored in death. 

In the absence of a supernatural revelation 
accepted as such, which assures the doubter of 
the being of God and insures adequate compen- 
sation for all evils not caused by personal trans- 
gression of moral law, such facts will tempt 
many to deny that this world is governed by a 
merciful Providence. 
Natural ^ * s ^e fashion of poets, and of some phi- 

*comfensa- losophers who should be counted among prose 
poets, to assume a theory of compensation de- 
monstrable in the lives of individual sufferers. 
Others predicate the compensation of the race 



Hon" 
fancy. 



And Their Contrasts. 37 

or of the universe. Yet one scourge among 
others stands out with appalling distinctness, 
rudely denying individual compensation. It is 
hereditary insanity! Splendid are the asylums 
and hospitals for the insane. Monuments they 
are of civilization and philanthropy. Long be- 
fore the hereditary taint was recognized of a 
fourth of the inmates of these institutions, their 
own sufferings and the miseries of their friends 
were often inconceivable; but when the door of 
hope was shut by unmistakable evidences of in- 
sanity, blasphemy seemed almost normal speech. 
Compensation for such hopeless helplessness is a 
taunt rather than a message of consolation. Yet 
love mocks at hygienic restriction, and through 
the ages, never more than now, those foredoomed 
to madness are brought into the world. 

Another class, who rebel against conscience 
and will brook no restraint, in ridding them- 
selves of a sense of responsibility find it neces- 
sary utterly to deny the being of a God. 

In the aggregate there have been a large Not al1 ™*° 
number of atheists; but it is not reasonable to . °*?. M 

be atheists 

believe that the major part of those who, in are really 
different ages, and especially in modern times, *°' 
have avowed themselves atheists, were actually 



38 The Fundamentals 

so. One instance among many will illustrate the 
difference between real and imagined belief. 
Dr. Daniel Wise, an editor and author of much 
repute, was for some years a resident of Spring- 
field, Mass. Entering a bookstore one day, he 
found an atheist trying to convince a number of 
young men that belief in a God is absurd. The 
man became bold, flippant, and blasphemous, and 
at last said, "If there is a God, I here and now 
relinquish all claim upon him in this world, or 
any other, if there is one." Dr. Wise said, "Do 
you really believe what you have just asserted?" 
"I do," was the reply. "Then of course you 
would not object to sign a paper to that effect?" 
The man hesitated, but his companions ex- 
claimed, "If you believe it why are you afraid 
(to sign it?" He agreed to do so. Whereupon 
Dr. Wise wrote down what he had declared, add- 
ing, "And because I really believe this, and am 
ready to take the consequences, I hereby affix 
my signature." Again he hesitated, but being 
rallied by those who had heard him, signed the 
paper. Dr. Wise folded it, placed it in his 
pocket, and left the store. After he had walked 
a few hundred yards, he heard the footsteps of 
some one gaining upon him. An instant after- 



And Their Contrasts. 39 

wards he was accosted and found the atheist at 
his side. Said the latter, "I will be much obliged 
if you will give me the paper I signed." "What ! 
do you not believe what you said ?" "Yes, but I 
think I would feel easier if that paper was not 
in existence." Dr. Wise surrendered it to him, 
adding an earnest appeal. A shrewd judge of 
human nature, he had long before observed that 
in opponents of all religion, especially deniers of 
the being of God, there is usually some element 
in head or heart which if touched will either 
neutralize their atheistic tendencies, or counter- 
act their influence by causing inconsistent ac- 
tions. 

"As the cant and fashion" of religion exist, A f ashion °f 

atheism. 

so may exist "a cant and fashion of atheism • ; 
and men may affirm that they believe there is 
no God, while by their conduct in emergencies 
they show that such belief is superficial. In cer- 
tain periods, in order to shake the sensibilities 
of those who consider faith in the being of God 
their most precious treasure, blaspheming athe- 
ists, ever seeking to demonstrate that they do 
not believe in a God, have been numerous. This 
was the case about the time of the first French 
Revolution, when there was an epidemic of an- 



Voltaire. 



40 The Fundamentals 

tagonism to the very idea or name of a God. 
That view spread here and there in England and 
in the United States shortly after the Revolution. 
Many who called themselves deists were prac- 
tically speculative atheists. Hence the uncertain 
use of the terms "infidel" and "atheist." 
Moriey on John Morley, in his "Life of Voltaire," says, 

"English deism was only a particular way of re- 
pudiating Christianity. There was as little of 
God in it as could well be." Voltaire's theory 
was that God had given every man the light of 
life in his own breast; that by his reason every 
scheme of belief must be tried, and accepted or 
rejected; and that the Christian scheme, being 
so tested, was in various ways found wanting. 
The formula of some book of the eighteenth cen- 
tury that "God created Nature, and Nature 
created the world," must be allowed to have re- 
duced the atheistic conception to something like 
"the shadow of smoke." The English eighteenth 
century formula was, atheistically, nearly as 
void. 

"France," says Morley, "carried the godless 
deism of the English school to its fair conclu- 
sion, and dismissed a deity, who only reigned 
and did not govern." "Voltaire, who carried the 



And Their Contrasts. 41 

English way of thinking about supernatural pow- 
er into France, lived to see a band of trenchant 
and energetic disciples develop principles which 
he had planted into a system of dogmatic athe- 
ism." 

Lord Bacon had such a horror of superstitions L° rd Bacons 
as to say, in his seventeenth essay: "Atheism em * 

y * generalua- 

leaves a man to sense and to philosophy and nat- tion. 
ural piety, to laws, to reputation. All of which 
may be guides to an outward, moral virtue, 
though religion were not. But superstition dis- 
counts all these and erecteth an absolute mon- 
archy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism 
did never perturb states; for it makes men 
worry of themselves as looking no further; 
and we see the times inclined to atheism (as 
the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times." 
He used this term "civil" as equivalent to tran- 
quil. 

But Lord Bacon had not seen the first French 
Revolution, nor did he represent correctly the 
history of atheism in Rome. Voltaire speaks of 
it as "having destroyed the republic," and charges 
"that it was factious in the time of Sully and 
Caesar and slavish under Augustus and Tiberius." 
Atheistic nihilism, anarchism, and various forms 



4 2 



The Fundamentals 



Atheism the 
enemy of 
mankind. 



of socialism of which he never heard, are great 
perturbers of states/' 

When atheism fairly reveals itself, it trans- 
forms most of its believers into dangerous en- 
emies of society. Devoid of faith in God, hu- 
man freedom, and a future life, there is no basis 
for what may be called "natural piety." The 
temperament and the interests of man will con- 
trol his action. In a regulated state of society, 
many atheists might confine themselves to the 
gratification of their predominant desires, to 
their own protection and that of their families, 
and if endowed with benevolent dispositions be 
good citizens. But the first French Revolution, 
in which an atheistic hatred of religion predom- 
inated, had no principle of self-control, and 
plunged into an abyss of licentiousness, brutality, 
and immorality.. 

Atheism, boldly avowed as a universal neg- 
ative, carrying with it a denial of human free- 
dom and a future state, cannot permanently pre- 
vail, even against the most absurd and supersti- 
tious form of religion. Hence as man will have 
a religion, it is the promoter of superstition. 

The dogmatic denier of the being of a God 
asserts what, even if true, he could never know, 



And Their Contrasts. 43 

and places himself outside the court of rational 
discussion. He who denies that the existence of 
a Supreme Being can be proved may escape the 
name "atheist," but is left by his proposition but 
a step above the other. He who denies that the 
nature of man is capable of receiving satisfactory 
evidence of the being of God, by means of a 
combination of observations and spiritual experi- 
ences, may not be an atheist in the strict sense 
of the word, but he cannot be counted among 
theists. Even though he does not say, "There 
is no God," his position is equivalent to saying, 
"I have no conviction of the being of a God." 

The atheistic view of the universe makes it a Atheism a 
hopeless mystery. It affords no reasonable ac- starless 

midnight. 

count of the existence of the world, of man or 
his moral and religious nature ; and enchains him 
to a remorseless fate in which there is no place 
for personal immortality. 

From this point of view the temptations to 
doubt the being of a God are among the strong- 
est evidences that he exists. The inward per- 
plexities of the soul, the yearning for an explana- 
tion — for some idea or principle which will ac- 
count to us for ourselves, for the moral contra- 
dictions in our situation, the prosperity of the 



44 The Fundamentals 

unrighteous, the miseries and afflictions of the 
most meritorious, our innate sense of responsi- 
bility, love of life, fear of death, helplessness 
as the closing scene draws near, — all seek, within 
and without, for relief which can come only 
through faith in a Power without mortal limita- 
tions. 

The entire contents of Chapter I. in Book 
XXV. of Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws," 
entitled "Of Religious Sentiment/' consists of 
the following sentence: "The pious man and the 
atheist always talk of religion; the one speaks 
of what he loves, the other of what he fears." 

Pantheism. 

In modern usage pantheism stands for various 
forms of thought, one of which can properly be 
described as atheism. The term pantheism is 
frequently used by those who have one idea of 
its meaning, while readers of their writings find 
another ; this ever gives rise to misunderstanding 
and, consequently, to endless controversies. One 
of the regrettable factors in this misunderstand- 
ing is that dictionaries are liable to mislead the 
people. 

Here we have to deal with that form of 



And Their Contrasts. 45 

pantheism which is practically atheistic ; and this A complex 
is not easy, as the disputes as to whether Spino- 
za's view was atheistic or not sufficiently show. 
Lewes, in "The Biographical History of Phi- 
losophy," and also in one of the English Re- 
views, defended Spinoza from the charge of 
"spiritual atheism," and affirms that he repudi- 
ated the idea. But at the same time Lewes ad- 
mits that there is "little difference between that 
theory of Spinoza, which makes God the one 
universal being, and atheism, which makes the 
cosmos the one universal existence." 

Any theory which substitutes for an absolute Atheistic 
and self-conscious spirit a so-called "world- **** under 

the name cf 

spirit," — not a living, personal being, but an un- pantheism. 
conscious and abstract one, — a mere conception 
of ideal being as the abstract totality of all in- 
dividual conceptions, is equivalent to atheism. 
That theory also is atheistic which asserts "that 
phenomena are nothing but the aggregations or 
modifications of the thinking mind or subject," 
and that thought creates not only matter, so 
called, but also God. 

It may be said that pantheistic dotcrines are 
widedy different from atheism, that they start 
from exactly opposite premises. This is true, 



46 The Fundamentals 

yet they come to the same thing in the end. The 
contrast in starting point and progress has been 
stated thus: 'The atheist begins with nature, 
perceives and recognizes the material universe, 
and denies that there is any God; the pantheist 
starts with the assumption of the existence of a 
divine being as a truth which the soul cannot 
deny, and maintains that he is identical with 
nature, — i. e., denies that there is any nature ex- 
cept God/' 
Hindoo pan- The pantheism of the Hindoos has had an 
theism and extraordinary effect upon modern literature and 

atheism, 

modern thought. It proceeds upon the theory 
that there is nothing but Brahm; the truth, the 
cow, the elephant, the flower, are fractions of 
Brahm, and the efforts made to voice this theory 
show, as has often been remarked, "a confusion 
of science and religion, at once the weakness and 
the strength, the glory and the shame, of the 
Hindoo mind." 

Its representative in the Parliament of Reli- 
gions at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago 
declared that God, "in the sense of a personal 
Creator of the universe, is not known in the 
Vedas," and that the highest effort of rational- 
istic thought in India has been to see God in the 



And Their Contrasts. 47 

totality of all that is. He emphatically said: "I 
humbly beg to differ from those who see in 
monotheism,— in the recognition of a personal 
God apart from nature, — the acme of intellectual 
development." However, in describing the Six 
Periods he shows that at some period of time 
every possible view has been held by the Hindoo. 
But he declares that just before the establish- 
ment of British rule and the peace and security 
that followed in its train, "the people had for- 
gotten the ancient religion, and Hindooism had 
dwindled into a mass of irrational superstition, 
reared upon myths that were not understood. 
When the British came, people began to think; 
but the change of work was no reformation at 
all. The mass of superstition known as Hin- 
dooism was scattered to the winds, and atheism 
and skepticism ruled supreme.". 

In response to questions, the representative 
declared that "in the sense of an extra cosmic, 
personal creator, God is not known to the phi- 
losophy of the Hindoos/' He affirmed that the 
world and the various beings in the world "are 
not created or devised by God"; "whence Prov- 
idence, as such, is out of the question." 

The philosophy of numerous Greeks may al- 



summary* 



48 The Fundamentals 

most with equal accuracy be described as "a sys- 
tem of atheistic physics or of materialistic pan- 
theism." Much of it differed from atheism 
merely in name. 
Prof, jokn Professor John Dewey, in treating panthe- 

ism, in the "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psy- 
chology/' says that "the term [pantheism] has a 
wide and loose meaning, especially in contro- 
versial writings, where the odium theologicum 
attaches to it; and in this way it is used to des- 
ignate almost any system which transcends cur- 
rent or received theism in its theory of a posi- 
tive, organic relation of God to the world.'' He 
holds that it is a matter of the nicest balance, 
especially in Christian theology, to keep the the- 
ory of the relation of God (as infinite) to the 
w r orld (as finite) from leaning to pantheism on 
the one side or to deism on the other. 

In tracing the different schools, Dewey de- 
clares that Hegel attempted a synthesis of ideas 
in opposition to each other, namely, theism and 
pantheism; and affirms that Hegel's system 
broke up into two schools, one avowedly pan- 
theistic, as in David Strauss, who unqualifiedly 
rejected a personal God, and the other atheistic, 
holding that God comes to existence merely and 



And Their Contrasts. 



49 



only in the evolution of human individuals. And 
he points out that Hartmann seems to make 
pantheism and monism the same, which identifi- 
cation of terms he deprecates from the point of 
view of clearness of thought, and places Spencer 
as alternating between pantheism, in his theory 
of an absolute unknowable force, and dualism, 
in his theory of the relation of mind to matter, 
subject, and object. 

Haeckel positively says : "Atheism affirms that HaeckeVs 
there are no gods or goddesses, assuming that 
god means a personal, extra-mundane entity. 
This 'godless world system' substantially agrees 
with the monism or pantheism of the modern 
scientist ; it is only another expression for it, em- 
phasizing its negative aspect, the nonexistence of 
any supernatural deity. In this sense Schopen- 
hauer justly remarks, 'Pantheism is only a polite 
form of atheism/ The truth of pantheism lies 
in its destruction of a dualistic antithesis of God 
and the world, in its recognition that the world 
exists in virtue of its own inherent forces. The 
maxim of the pantheist, 'God and the world are 
one/ is merely a polite way of giving God his 
conge!' 



identifica- 
tion of pan- 
theism and 
atheism. 



50 The Fundamentals 

As Haeckel, who has many more followers than 
theologians are willing to allow, expresses under 
a great array of scientific terminology what a 
large multitude dimly perceive, and is unques- 
tionably an atheist in that he has no place for a 
preexisting, independent, personal God, it may 
be well to see exactly for what he stands. He 
teaches that the universe or the cosmos is eternal, 
infinite, and illimitable. Its substance, with two 
attributes, matter and energy, fills infinite space, 
and is in eternal motion, which motion runs on 
with a periodic change from life to death and 
from evolution to devolution. "Man sprang 
from a series of man-like apes. The earth is the 
mere specific sunbeam of the illimitable universe, 
and man a tiny grain of protoplasm in the frame- 
work of organic nature." Naturally from his 
angle of perception he denounces "the bound- 
less presumption of conceited man which has 
misled him into making himself 'the image of 
God/ claiming eternal life for his ephemeral 
personality, and imagining that he possesses un- 
limited freedom of will." 

Speaking of a dualistic or monistic interpreta- 
tion of the cosmos, he says: "Dualism, in the 
widest sense, breaks uo the universe into two 



And Their Contrasts. 5 1 

entirely distinct substances, — the material world * 
and the immaterial God, who is represented to be 
its creator, sustainer, and ruler. Monism, on the 
contrary (likewise taken in its widest sense), 
recognizes one sole substance in the universe, 
which is at once 'God and nature.' } "Body and 
spirit (or matter and energy) it holds to be in- 
separable. The extra-mundane God of dualism 
leads necessarily to atheism; the intra-mundane 
God of the monist leads to pantheism/' 

The conclusion is this : Any form of pantheism 
which denies the personality of God is practical 
atheism; and any form of pantheism which will 
not allow that God can be conceived as existing 
prior to all that is included in the idea of nature, 
is equivalent to atheism. 

Positivism. 

Auguste Comte was the founder of a system 
which still exists; its chief exponent, Frederick 
Harrison, being known and respected throughout 
the literary world. 

Harrison defines the positive method of Th€ positive 
thought as one which bases life, conduct, and "" ° / J 
knowledge upon such evidence as can be re- 
ferred to logical canons of proof, which would 



$2 The Fundamentals 

place all that occupies man in a homogeneous 
system of law. He declares that the method 
turns aside from hypotheses, not to be tested by 
any known logical canon familiar to science, and 
it matters not whether the hypotheses claim sup- 
port from intuition, aspiration, or general plau- 
sibility. Nor will this method permit any ideal 
standards w T hich profess to transcend the field of 
law, and thus view themselves to be lawless. 
This is directly in harmony with the teachings 
of Comte, who renounces the investigation of the 
origin and destination of the universe. Positiv- 
ism does not deny the divine and the supernat- 
ural, but declares that they cannot be known. 
Comtek phi- I know of few books more interesting than 
losophy ex- « The p ositive philosophy of Auguste Comte" as 

plained by 

himself. translated by Harriet Martineau, the sister of the 
renowned James Martineau, and of brilliant tal- 
ents, she was definitely understood to be atheistic ; 
so clearly so that a wit of the time parodied the 
dogmatic statement of Mohammed, by saying, 
'There is no God, and Harriet Martineau is his 
prophet." Comte delineates "the three stages of 
mankind: the theological, which supposes all 
phenomena to be produced by the immediate ac- 
tion of supernatural beings ; the second, the meta- 



And Their Contrasts. 53 

physical stage, merely a modification of the first, 
in which, instead of supernatural beings, the 
mind supposes abstract forces, veritable entities, 
capable of producing all phenomena. And the 
third stage, the positive, when a man has given 
over the vain search after absolute notions, and 
the origin and destination of the universe. 

The positive sciences (which should be studied 
in the order named) are: mathematics, astron- 
omy, physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, and 
social physics. 

Out of this, Comte expected to produce a reli- 
gion of humanity, without a personal God, or a 
positive belief in personal immortality, or in hit- 
man freedom, in the proper sense of the word. 
To this religion of humanity he expected "France 
to bring a philosophic and political superiority ,, ; 
"England an earnest predilection for reality and 
utility"; "Germany a natural aptitude for sys- 
tem and generalization" ; "Italy its genius for 
art"; and "Spain its familiar combined sense of 
personal dignity and universal brotherhood." 
He seems not to have expected any particular 
contribution from America, as he does not so 
much as mention it. 

Having ignored the idea of God, the "Posi 



54 



The Fundamentals 



Comte*s re- 
ligion of 
mankind. 



tive Philosophy/ ' in all except a few minds of 
an elevated and mystical type, directly led to 
atheism. As he grew older, Comte felt the 
need of something beyond the positive sciences, 
and invented and systematized a species of "re- 
ligion of mankind/' which should be based on 
science, replacing the idea of God by the con- 
ception of ideal mankind. This was contra- 
dictory to various statements in his "Positive 
Philosophy/' in which he stigmatized the phrase 
"natural religion" a monstrosity, and also de- 
nounced "natural theology," on the reasonable 
ground that "religion must be essentially super- 
natural." 

Littre accepted the "Positive Philosophy" of 
Comte, in the statement: "We demand that lib- 
erty as to things that cannot be known. Positive 
science proposes neither to deny nor to affirm 
them. In a word, it does not know the un- 
knowable, but recognizes its existence. This is 
the highest philosophy; to go beyond is chimer- 
ical; to go not so far is to miss the mark." 

This definition would hardly have satisfied 
Comte. When advanced in years, Littre became 
a Christian of the Roman Catholic faith. 

The need of something equivalent to the idea 



And Their Contrasts. 



55 



attempted 
explanation 
of the fail- 
ure of posi- 
tivism. 



of God, as evinced by Comte's inventing a reli- 
gion, with ceremonies analogous to those of the 
Catholic Church, is a strong, indirect witness of 
the failure of his system, notwithstanding the 
rejection, by many of his followers, of his reli- 
gion, in which humanity is God. 

Frederick Harrison now occupies the position Harrisons 
of president of the English Positive Committee, 
and he accepts both the philosophy and the reli- 
gion of Comte. Last year he produced an arti- 
cle upon the subject, in which he attempts to 
account for the fact that positivism has but few 
votaries. He believes the cause to be in the fact 
that it is at once a philosophy, a polity, and a 
religion; the three harmonized by the idea of 
a supreme humanity. He declares that positiv- 
ism denounces the insolent folly of atheism and 
the arid nullity of agnosticism; and acknowl- 
edges that it is difficult to convince the reli- 
giously-minded that positivism can be "anything 
but a new attack upon Christianity and on the- 
ism." He quotes Comte as saying, 'The atheist 
is the most irrational of all theologians, for he 
gives the least admissible answer to the insolu- 
ble problems of the universe. " In this passage 
Comte certainly declares himself not a dogmatic 



$6 The Fundamentals 

denier of the being of God; but a God ignored 
on principle has the moral force of a God denied. 
Positivism is what may be called a passive at- 
tack upon theism. The element which might have 
been expected by Comte to rally to his stand- 
ard has been assimilated by a cult which, though 
unorganized, has attracted much attention and 
provoked many discussions within the last thirty- 
five years. 

Agnosticism. 

The term agnostic was first suggested by Pro- 
fessor Huxley at a reception in London, in 1869. 
He derived it from St. Paul's mention of the altar 
to "the unknown God." Huxley's own account 
in part was this: "When I reached intellectual 
maturity and began to ask myself whether I was 
an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist 
or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I 
found that the more I learned and reflected the 
less ready was the answer, until at last I came 
to the conclusion that I had neither art nor 
part with any of these denominations except 
the last." 
Definitions of It is said by Flint that "agnosticism is some- 
theterm. times spoken of as only another name for athe- 
ism. This should never be done." "A theist 



And Their Contrasts. 57 

and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist 
may not be an agnostic." But while this is true 
in a certain sense, there is a prevalent form of 
agnosticism which is equivalent to atheism. 

Romanes defines agnosticism as "a state of 
suspended judgment with regard to theism." All 
it undertakes to affirm is that upon existing evi- 
dence the being of God is unknown. But he 
says that "it is frequently used in a widely dif- 
ferent sense, as implying belief that the being of 
God is not merely now unknown, but must al- 
ways remain unknowable." 

Murray's whole definition of an agnostic is 
"one who holds that the existence of anything 
beyond and behind natural phenomena is un- 
known and (so far as can be judged) unknow- 
able, and especially that a First Cause and an 
unseen world are subjects of which we know 
nothing." 

Huxley disclaimed atheism. 

The spirit of agnosticism has appeared in all The agnostic 
ages. The modern history of it by Professor sptr 
Flint, of Edinburgh, is divided into two periods, 
the first extending from about the beginning of 
the sixteenth century to about the close of the 
fourth decade of the eighteenth. The second 



58 The Fundamentals 

period begins with the commencement of Hume's 
philosophical career. Flint declares that "there 
are no traces in Hume's writings, in his corre- 
spondence, or in trustworthy accounts of him, 
of hostility to religion. He objected to being 
called a deist, and manifestly because the name 
implied antagonism to Christianity." (Flint's 
"Agnosticism," p. 157.) 

Agnosticism relative to religion is described 
by Flint as possibly religious, anti-religious, or 
simply nonreligious. The nonreligious has no 
special reference to one more than to another of 
the ultimate objects of knowledge. Religious 
agnosticism denies "that we can know God, yet 
holds that without knowledge of him we may 
legitimately believe in him." 

This form of agnosticism he considers damag- 
ing, believes it to be inconsistent, for it deals in 
a suspicious, critical, and negative manner with 
reason, and with faith it deals in a credulous, 
dogmatic, and affirmative way. 
Place of re- Yet it is certain that there is a place for reli- 
gious agnosticism — agnosticism such as that ex- 
pressed by David concerning God, when he says, 
"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is 
high, I cannot attain unto it." Or St. Paul, 



ligious ag- 
nosticism. 



And Their Contrasts. 59 

when he says, "Oh the depths of the riches both 
of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how un- 
searchable are his judgments, and his ways past 
finding out!" And again when he declares, 
"Now we see through a glass darkly." When 
he says, "It is only in comparatively recent times 
that agnosticism has betaken itself to the flatter- 
ing of science and the singling out of religion 
as the special object of its hostility," Flint makes 
a point, supported by history. Huxley thought 
"the existence of beings higher than man rather 
probable than otherwise, and the government of 
the universe by 'a divine syndicate' of great spir- 
itual essences quite logical." 

Of the practical effect, one of the best state- Agnosticism's 
ments is this: "Facts or supposed facts, both of * as y dri fl 

round to* 

the lower and the higher life, are accepted, but wa ^ athem 
all inferences deduced from these facts as to the *""• 
existence of an unseen world or of beings higher 
than man are considered unsatisfactory and are 
ignored." 

Analyzing the subject closely, the conclusion 
is inevitable that upon some earnest minds, for- 
merly inclined to atheism, the acceptance of ag- 
nosticism may operate thus : There being an in- 
voluntary doubt concerning the existence of a 



6o 



The Fundamentals 



Atheism 
more dan- 
gerous 
when un- 
recognized. 



personal God and a future life for man, such 
minds may accept the reigning religion as valu- 
able, sympathize with its reasonable aims and 
purposes, and allow the imagination to dwell 
upon its promises, and in a few cases upon its 
warnings. 

But a secular or strictly scientific mind, deal- 
ing with the physical universe, imbued with a 
spirit of agnosticism, will pursue the same course 
of ignoring religion and its duties which a spec- 
ulative atheist would follow, and, — if there be 
a tendency to self-indulgence or to any enslav- 
ing form of vice, — the influence will be exactly 
the same as that of atheism, or anti-theistic ma- 
terialism. 

As respects the being of God, agnosticism 
strikes a blow at all religion. It may destroy at 
once, or, like an opiate, deaden the sensibilities. 

In Germany and France the products of athe- 
ism and agnosticism, varying only in effect of 
temperament, are the same; and in the United 
States it is more difficult to interest an agnostic 
in any form of religion than it is a mere doubter 
or an outright infidel. Skeptics and infidels will 
frequently listen to arguments ; the agnostic, hav- 
ing, either by original thinking or the impress 



And Their Contrasts. 61 

of a dogmatic assertion of many real or reputed 
scientists, determined that nothing can be known 
about God or the truth of Christianity or of any 
other religion, believes that the best use of his 
time is to devote it to practical matters. In this 
conclusion the atheist, the pantheist, the posi- 
tivist, and the agnostic unite. They spend their 
lives, according to their temperament and en- 
vironment, as though there were no God. 

The spirit of this age is highly favorable to 
agnosticism. The complacent utterances of some 
ecclesiastics and metaphysicians, to the effect 
that the agnostic fever seems already to be burn- 
ing out, are overconfident. This is not the case 
in the popular mind, and in many instances 
where it seems to be decreasing in the scientific 
mind it has only become reticent or is substi- 
tuted for that form of pantheism which is equiv- 
alent to atheism. 

As Browning says : 

I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. 
The more of doubt, the stronger faith I say 
If faith o'ercomes doubt. 



III. 

MANY GODS OR ONE. 



III. 

MANY GODS OR ONE. 

Although the immense majority of mankind 
have believed in the existence of a god (or 
gods), yet there exists the wildest diversity of 
view concerning their attributes and relation to 
man and the world. Even among those who be- 
lieve in only one god questions arise as to wheth- 
er he governs, or has committed government in 
part or in whole to inferior though divine beings ; 
and whether he loves, pities, and cares for man, 
or has little or no interest in him. In most 
religions, avowedly or in popular apprehension, 
there have been more gods than one. Generally 
there have been different gods in each system, 
to whom was accorded power to answer prayer, 
or to perform other functions, and who were 
supposed to live forever; belief in gradations of 
gods has also widely prevailed. According to 
the sacred writings of the Jews, all the nations 
with whom they came in contact had more gods 
than one, and those nations possessed images of 
various forms. 

5 (65) 



66 The Fundamentals 

Gods of the Among existing aborigines the wildest con- 

aborigines. 

fusion exists. It is impossible to classify their 
religion except under a few broad and elastic 
principles. 

The New Caledonians and the inhabitants of 
the Solomon Islands worship their ancestors ; but 
they also have gods, and pray to one for the 
eye, and to another for the ear, and offer sac- 
rifices to spirits of the deceased. In Tana trav- 
elers have found no idols, but the banyan is 
worshiped as a sacred tree and the natives ven- 
erate certain sacred stones. In various parts of 
New Hebrides gods are believed to be malig- 
nant beings. The inhabitants have a tradition 
that their islands were fished up by the gods, 
who afterwards created men and women. In 
the Friendly Islands religious belief is some- 
what more developed. The higher classes are 
supposed to have originally come down from the 
abode of the gods. The Hervey Islanders have 
peculiar ideas of the universe and of spirits. 

The harmony and discord of the Indians of 
North America in religious ideas and customs 
have furnished scientific materials to anthropol- 
ogists, sentiment and imagery to poets, and prob- 
lems to philosophers. Nearly every thought 



And Their Contrasts. 67 

which has occurred to mankind is discovered 
here. Many of the ideas of the Aztecs are 
amazing in scope, and by some are thought to 
demonstrate indubitably the existence of a prim- 
itive revelation. For example, buildings were 
erected to a deity, "not represented by an im- 
age," but described as "He who is all in him- 
self" The majority of these religions are poly- 
theistic. 

Fetichism is a worship of individual objects. Fetichism and 
This word "fetich," is applied to the objects of **■■*»• 
primitive adoration, "originated with Portuguese 
traders and settlers who came in contact with 
the African population." The African con- 
ceives the object which he makes a fetich as 
having a consciousness and affections similar to 
those of the human being. Material things 
which are worshiped are regarded as the abodes 
of spirits, or "more strictly the belief is that the 
possession of the thing can procure the services 
of the spirit lodged within it." 

Fetichism exists especially among the negroes 
in Africa, but also among the Polynesians, the 
primitive inhabitants of Siberia, and the aborig- 
ines of the North and South American conti- 
nents. Closely connected with fetichism is mag- 



68 The Fundamentals 

ic, and this fact has led some to deny that such 
worship can be regarded as a religion. 

The facts which justify the describing of 
fetichism as a religion are such as these: In 
connection with such worship there are festivals, 
and sacrifices of oxen, swine, and other animals. 
Criminals, prisoners, and persons of the lowest 
classes are immolated sacrificially, and priests 
acting as mediators are reverenced and obeyed. 
Priests also form a separate society, with hered- 
itary dignity, property, and privileges. 

The worship of animals occurs in the same 
grade of development in which fetichism flour- 
ishes. 

Totemism is a modern word to designate an 
ancient custom based on the idea that natural 
objects, including animals, are so related to men 
as to protect them or their tribes. In the science 
of comparative religions the worship of totems 
is classified as the next in order of religious ad- 
vancement above fetichism, which is considered 
the lowest. It prevailed in Siberia, ancient Ger- 
many, and in North and South America. The 
early European settlers found it everywhere 
among the Indians, and to observe its practice 
by the Indians is one of the interesting experi- 



ted and elab- 
orate syS' 
terns. 



And Their Contrasts. 69 

ences of a visit to Alaska. Relics of totemism 
can be found in the early history of Israel. 

Since to the mind untaught by revelation the 
world seems a vast scene of carnage, and col- 
lisions of mighty forces, belief in a number of 
gods would naturally arise. 

The heavenly bodies would inspire reverence, More eieva- 
— especially those distinguished, in the figurative 
speech of many nations, as the King of Day 
and the Queen of Night, and the most brilliant 
stars, as well as those so related to each other 
as to seem significant, such as the Dipper, the 
Seven Stars, the North Polar and South Polar 
Stars, and the Southern Cross; while comets, 
meteors, and eclipses of the sun and moon have 
ever agitated and often awed the inhabitants of 
the earth. 

The old religion of the Semitic races (Arabs 
and Syrians) consisted chiefly in deifying the 
powers and laws of nature. The powers were 
regarded as distinct and independent, and occa- 
sionally, though without appearing to recognize 
the incompatibility of the two ideas, they con- 
sidered both as manifestations of one Supreme 
Being. The deity was frequently regarded as 
male and female, the one representing the active 



70 The Fundamentals 

and the other the passive principle of nature ; the 
one supposed to be the source of spiritual, the 
other of physical, life. 
Germs of j n Africa some of the aboriginal tribes make 

higher con- 
ceptions. a definite distinction between the idol which they 

worship and that which they call "the indwell- 
ing" g°d." The negroes of the Gold Coast are 
conscious, says an authority, that their offer- 
ings and worship are not paid to the inanimate 
object itself. They even recognize the fact that 
"the inhabiting god" frequently removes himself 
by leaving the object in which he ordinarily 
dwells and entering the body of the priest. 

The Iroquois Indians of this continent believed 
in one supreme good spirit, the Creator, but also 
in "an evil spirit, his brother, who is eternal and 
possesses some creative power." The elaborate 
religion of the Peruvians was polytheistic; for 
though the sun was the chief god, the moon was 
worshiped as his sister and wife. There were 
two great deities, and besides the sun and these 
deities (one of whom was supposed to have 
made the sun, moon, and stars) the rainbow, the 
planet Venus, and many stars, fire, the earth, 
trees, plants, and animals were worshiped. 

A remarkable similarity exists between the 



And Their Contrasts. 7 1 

ideas of peoples in the same grade of intellect 
and development throughout the world, as is 
shown by the study of the aboriginal religions of 
India and other parts of Asia. But the great 
systematized religions of the world most demand 
and reward attention. 

ZOROASTRIANISM. 

Zoroastrianism dates from 1201 B.C., when 
Zoroaster offered his theistic system and de- 
stroyed the primitive polytheism which he found 
still intrenched. He named his religion Mazda- 
worship, Mazda being the Parsee name for God. 
In the later writings of the Avesta the form 
most frequently met with is Ahura-Mazda. 

Every follower of Zoroaster made this con- 
fession : "I confess myself a worshiper of Mazda, 
a follower of Zoroaster, an opponent of all false 
gods, and subject to the laws of the Lord." 

The original system of Zoroaster was most ex- 
alted. He believed in one God, the Creator, the 
distinction between a natural and a spiritual life, 
also in angels and personal immortality, and the 
system abounded in deep religious thought. But 
after his death "the priests rehabilitated, though 
in subordinate positions, the earlier spirits, which 



72 The Fundamentals 

were considered as presiding over fire, water, 
earth, and all the great creations of nature/' 
One of the most distinguished Parsee scholars 
acknowledges this. Also it is true that at first 
Zoroastrianism did not conceive the evil spirit 
Ahriman to be a god, but after the founder had 
departed this life many of his followers so de- 
generated as to attribute creative power to the 
evil spirit and to worship him. 

When about the middle of the seventh century 
A.D. the Arabs overthrew the Persian monarchy, 
many of the Parsees, rather than renounce their 
ancestral religion, renounced ancestral homes and 
removed to western India. The modern Par- 
sees of India are the descendants of those ancient 
settlers. Of these Max Miiller says: "Here is 
a religion, one of the most ancient of the world, 
once the state religion of the most powerful em- 
pire, driven away from its native soil, and de- 
prived of political influence without even the 
prestige of a powerful or enlightened priesthood, 
and yet professed by a handful of exiles — men 
of wealth, intelligence, and moral worth in west- 
ern India, with an unhesitating fervor such as 
is seldom to be found in larger religious com- 
munities." 



And Their Contrasts. 73 

In 1 89 1 there were ninety thousand Par sees 
in India, about sixty per cent, in Bombay. About 
nine thousand are in Persia; but, while the oth- 
ers are generally wealthy, these are poor. 

The Parsees are highly respected, and their 

scholars are endeavoring to bring their religion 

into close harmony with the teachings of its 

founder. 

Confucianism. 

The term Confucianism does not represent a 
religion except in a limited degree, yet to many 
millions it is the nearest approach to a system of 
worship they possess, and it is inextricably 
mingled with the religions of hundreds of mil- 
lions more. The honorable Pung Kwang Yu, 
a Confucianist, Secretary of the Chinese Lega- 
tion at Washington from 1887 to 1893, and rep- 
resentative of the Chinese government at the 
World's Congress in Chicago, declared that "the 
ethical system of Confucius cannot be called a 
religion." Nevertheless he adds, "China has a 
religion/' 

Confucius said, "He who has sinned against 
Heaven has no place to pray." The Chinese 
diplomat further remarks: "From the earliest 
times down to the present day the Chinese, as 



74 The Fundamentals 

a nation, — from the emperor, the highest dignity 
and authority, to the peasant, the lowest in social 
grade, — have always paid the highest reverence 
to Heaven and to spirits." Speaking of those 
who live a mere animal life, Pung Kwang Yu 
says, If they are not sensible of their degradation, 
"even Heaven cannot do anything for them." 

"The Spirit who rules this universe of cre- 
ated things; who accomplishes all his purposes 
without effort; whose presence cannot be per- 
ceived by 'the senses of hearing and smell; who 
dwells ever in an atmosphere of serene majesty, 
is called by Confucianists Ji, Supreme Ruler, 
and not merely "shen," spirit. "Ji" is the Gov- 
ernor of all subordinate spirits who cannot be 
said to be propitious or unpropitious, beneficent 
or maleficent." 

Dr. Legge describes Confucianism "as not an- 
tagonistic to Christianists as are Buddhism and 
Brahmanism. It is not atheistic like the for- 
mer, nor pantheistic like the latter." According 
to Confucius, the worship of Heaven should be 
offered by the emperor only, worshiping both 
for himself and for the people representatively. 
But "all, from the emperor down, should worship 
their ancestors." 



And Their Contrasts. 75 

The system of Confucius seems to be a com- 
mingling of the spirit of agnosticism and posi- 
tivism, except that the "wisdom of the ancients" 
in social duties has the place which in positivism 
is filled by physical science. An eminent Con- 
fucianist exclaims, "What need is there of troub- 
ling the 'Great Lord of Eastern Mountains' of 
the Taoists, the 'Yen Lo' of the Buddhists, and 
the Christ of the Christians to judge the dead 
after death and reward every man according to 
his deserts? He who does his duty has already 
ascended to Heaven, and he who allows the lust 
of the flesh to defile his heart and pervert the use 
of his senses has already entered into hell." 

Buddhism. 

Dharmapola of Ceylon says that "when mon- 
otheism of the most crude type, from fetichism, 
animism, anthropomorphic deism to dualism, was 
rampant, and materialism from sexual Epicu- 
reanism to transcendental Nihilism was inter- 
mingled with the other notions, then Buddha 
appeared. 

Buddhism denies that there is a Creator, al- 
though it "allows" the supreme god and minor 
gods of the Brahmans. Two of Buddha's doc- 



*j6 The Fundamentals 

trines are, "Nothing is to be accepted on faith/' 
"There is no personal immortality." 

A distinguished representative of Buddhism, 
visiting this country, said of it at the World's 
Fair in 1893: "Some take it (Buddhism) to be 
polytheism, some atheism, some a system of 
pessimism, some idolatry." 

Buddhism deifies the law of cause and effect, 
holding the laws of nature to be independent of 
the will of Buddha, and yet more independent 
of the will of human beings. There is "no 
beginning or ending of all things." It teach- 
es that "all things both sensible and senseless 
have the nature of Buddha." "Pain or pleas- 
ure are experienced as the result of good 
or evil, and there is no Buddha or divinity 
who administers the consequences of good or 
evil." 
Divisions of Of Buddhism there are two grand divisions in 
India, one primarily seeking illumination, and 
the other to attain perfection by keeping the rules 
of Buddha. There are thirteen sects of Bud- 
dhists in China, and twelve sects and thirty 
schools in Japan. In China Buddhism is "a col- 
lection of degrading superstition." In Siam it 
is much changed. All things are made of Rufa, 



Buddhism. 



And Their Contrasts. 77 

matter, and Nama, spirit. These together make 
Dharma, the universe. 

In Japan, Buddhism has made its best presen- 
tation. Though "split up into many sects, the 
very difference of opinion has led to one sect's 
vying with another in propagandist education. ,, 
This is the opinion of numerous residents and 
Christian travelers with whom I have conversed. 
But its radical defects as a religion are obvious in 
Japan. It belongs to the type of religion that 
has no place for a God having the elements of 
personality. 

Griffis declares that at least thirty-eight mil- 
lions of the population are not simply Shintoist, 
Confucianist, or Buddhist, but an amalgam of 
the three. The average Japanese learns about 
the gods and draws inspiration for his patriot- 
ism from Shintoism ; maxims for his ethical and 
social life from Confucianism; and his hope of 
what he regards as salvation from Buddhism. 

There appears to have been originally in J a- survival of 
pan, Shamanism, which was a worship of spirits, ahori e tnal 

religion in 

some Shamanists believing in a god above them, j a pan. 
and others not; and there are millions who are 
Shamanists without the name. Fetichism still 
has some hold there, and many of the inhab- 



78 The Fundamentals 

itants have a mythical zoology, a species of 
animism, which includes worshiping animals 
which do not exist; some remains of serpent 
worship are also found. The power of fetich- 
ism is to-day so great in Japan that of the 7,817,- 
570 houses enumerated in the census of 1892, 
7,000,000 are objects of insurance against fetich- 
ism. 

The ancient religions of Greece and Rome 
were polytheistic. There was an especial god 
for each division and force of nature, for trades- 
men, and even for thieves — the Roman Empire 
permitting all subjected nations to retain their 
ancient religions. At the time of Paul's resi- 
dence in Athens the Athenians attempted to in- 
clude all possible gods, known or unknown, 
making their city practically a pantheon. 

From the foregoing survey certain conclu- 
sions are warranted. 
Conclusions I* 1 uneducated races or nations the stronger 
warranted tendency is to more gods than one. The con- 
ception of one God might have been reached in 
all, except among the lowest tribes, by the 
strongest and most cultured minds, but would 
not be received by the mass of the people. In 
various instances where the conception of one 



vey 



And Their Contrasts. 79 

God had been adopted by a whole people, or a 
large number, they have retrograded to poly- 
theism. 

Priestly orders, although necessary, have every- 
where introduced complexity and diminished sim- 
plicity of spirit, worship, and rules of life, thus 
dividing adherents into contending factions. 

The great ancestral religions have undergone 
vast changes, some of them to the verge of ob- 
literation of their distinctive features. From 
polytheism to monotheism and from monotheism 
back to polytheism is a circuit which various re- 
ligions have traversed. 

Those who positively affirm that the person- 
ality 6i a supreme god was not recognized in 
any of the early beliefs of China, India, or 
Egypt, have deceived themselves by their gen- 
eral theory, which requires that the conception 
of one God should be last in the order of devel- 
opment. 

The presumption is strong that in a remote 
period not covered by ancient monuments and 
inscriptions the idea of one Creator was seen, if 
dimly, by some among various peoples. That 
it can be demonstrated I by no means maintain; 
but in that respect it resembles the hypothesis 



80 The Fundamentals 

that the human race remained without the con- 
ception for countless ages. But, if the belief in 
one God was anciently general in any country, 
there is abundant evidence, in the present condi- 
tion of a large part of the world, that polytheism 
so modified religious conceptions as in some 
cases to lead to the obliteration of the idea of 
one God of infinite attributes, and in others, to 
the substitution of a nondescript, executive head 
without power. 

One God the Father Almighty. 

Having seen how greatly perplexed has been 
the human race in endeavoring to account for the 
universe of which it is a part, it is incumbent 
to marshal the evidences of the being of a God, 
infinite in attributes — the only Eternal Per- 
son. 

This hypothesis is unlike all others which the 
human mind can conceive or receive. Its es- 
sence is the idea of an uncaused Being who is 
the universal Cause of all that exists or can 
exist. 

The Greek philosophy as interpreted, con- 
densed into a single sentence, is: "Since the 
highest human intelligence discovers iri nature 



And Their Contrasts. 81 

an intelligible object far surpassing its capacity 
of apprehension, the design and construction of 
the whole natural order must proceed from an 
Author of supreme and divine intelligence." This 
simple statement is sufficient for those who do 
not believe the universe itself to be eternal. 

But in the stress of doubt and the pressure upon 
mind and heart of the calamities, contradictions, 
and silences of nature, many would find them- 
selves in peril of intellectual suffocation. After 
floundering in the morass of doubt, I formed the 
habit of reading all arguments, speculations, or 
philosophical reflections upon the problems of 
existence and of the Author of the universe, es- 
pecially the productions of serious men of high 
position in the scientific world. Of these the 
simplest, briefest, and most convincing was writ- 
ten by Professor Joseph Henry, a celebrated 
American scientist of the middle of the last cen- 
tury, and at the time of his death the head 
of the Smithsonian Institution. It was written 
under the date of April 12, 1878, to a lifelong 
friend, and proved to be the last important letter 
that he wrote; for in less than two months he 
was attacked by a fatal malady, and, mourned by 
scientists everywhere, finished a glorious career. 
6 



82 The Fundamentals 

Joseph Hen- "How many questions press themselves upon 
J \ a r sts r us ! Whence come we ? Whither are we go- 

for belief & 

in God. ing ? What is our final destiny ? What the ob- 
ject of our creation? What mysteries of un- 
fathomable depth environ us on every side!" 

But after all our speculations and attempts to 
grapple with the problem of the universe, the 
simplest conception which explains and connects 
the phenomena is that of the existence of one 
spiritual Being, infinite in wisdom, in power, and 
all divine perfections; who exists always and 
everywhere ; who has created us with intellectual 
powers sufficient in some degree to comprehend 
his operations as they are developed in nature by 
what is called "science." This Being is un- 
changeable, and therefore his operations are al- 
ways in accordance with the same laws, the con- 
ditions being the same. Events that happened a 
thousand years ago will happen again a thou- 
sand years to come, provided the condition of 
existence is the same. Indeed, a universe not 
governed by law would be a universe without 
the evidence of an intellectual director. 

In the scientific explanation of physical phe- 
nomena we assume the existence of a principle 
having properties sufficient to produce the effects 



And Their Contrasts. 83 

which we observe; and when the principle so 
assumed explains, by logical deductions, all the 
phenomena, we call it a theory; thus we have the 
theory of light, the theory of electricity, etc. 
There is no proof, however, of the truth of these 
theories except the explanation of the phenomena 
to account for which they are invented. This 
proof is sufficient in any case in which every fact 
is fully explained, and can be predicted when 
the conditions are known to be the same. 

In accordance with this scientific view, on what 
evidence does the existence of a Creator rest? 
First, it is one of the truths best established by 
experience in my own mind that I have a think- 
ing, willing principle within me, capable of in- 
tellectual activity and of moral feeling. Second, 
it is equally clear to me that you have a similar 
spiritual principle within yourself, since when I 
ask you an intelligent question you give me an 
intellectual answer. Third, when I examine op- 
erations of nature I find everywhere through 
them evidences of intellectual arrangements, of 
contrivances to reach definite ends, precisely as 
I find in the operations of man; and hence I 
infer that these two classes of operations are 
results of similar intelligence. 



God. 



84 The Fundamentals 

Again, in my own mind I find ideas of right 
and wrong, of good and evil. These ideas, then, 
exist, in the universe, and therefore form a basis 
of our ideas of a moral universe. Furthermore, 
the conceptions of good which are found among 
our ideas associated with evil can be attributed 
only to a being of infinite perfections, like that 
whom we denominate "God." 
The seif-re- The theory of an Uncaused Original Power 

vealing • 1 1 • , . , . . 

tower of the ^S rees wlt ^ the conscience which is in every man, 
idea of one and strengthens and unifies those faculties or 
tendencies to which the word "moral" can be 
correctly applied. It also harmonizes with the 
conception of a Creator both transcendent and 
immanent, — a God who can be conceived to be 
the "Great First Cause" and who is in every 
creature, animate and inanimate, that he has 
made. 

In his address to the Athenians, Paul recog- 
nized this truth as having been expressed by 
some of the Grecian poets, who had said, "We 
are his offspring." The expansion of the idea 
by Revelation enabled him to declare that "He 
is not far from every one of us: for in him we 
live, and move, and have our being." 

This hypothesis of an Uncaused Infinite Cre- 



And Their Contrasts, 85 

ator can be made — and it only can be made — the 
basis of a religion which can develop man to 
the highest degree possible to a finite nature, and 
render him independent of contingencies, — and 
of priests, except for admonition, instruction, 
and consolation: for God has constant access 
to every mind and heart which he has created. 
The belief in one God affords means for the 
solution of every problem in philosophy, and 
transforms genuine science into an aid to faith. 
All otherwise unanswerable questions concern- 
ing life, death, and the future, which perplex 
the human spirit, are answerable in the light of 
this all-inclusive principle. 

The being of God, accepted as truth, explains 
every problem or affords satisfactory evidence 
that it is explicable. It accounts for the exist- 
ence of man, and raises and supports the pre- 
sumption that some extraordinary end was in- 
tended in his creation. Immeasurable is the dif- 
ference between the intellectual operations of the 
thinker who has no place for God in his scheme 
of the universe, and those of one who makes a 
belief in one God his primary postulate never to 
be questioned or ignored. 

The being of God is indeed an inscrutable mys- 



86 The Fundamentals 

tery, but it explains all other mysteries; and the 
hopeful mystery of an intelligent and purpose- 
ful Creator, when contrasted with the hopeless 
mystery of a universe without a Creator, will 
ever so reveal its truth to a reflecting mind and 
an humble heart as to seem an innate idea. 
For a belief in God, and it alone, makes personal 
immortality credible. Not only does it render it 
credible, but requires it to satisfy the aspira- 
tions of the soul and to justify the ways of God 
to the intellectual and moral beings whom he 
has created. 



IV. 

INSPIRATION AND REVELATION. 



IV. 

INSPIRATION AND REVELATION. 

While all the religions which have occupied 
our attention have claimed a divine origin, only 
three are based on the belief in one God and 
no more — Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammed- 
anism. The principal sacred writings of the 
Jews are comprised in the Old Testament, and 
those of Christianity in the Old and the New ; the 
Roman and Greek Churches recognize a sacred 
character in the writings designated by Prot- 
estants as the Apocrypha. The Mohammedan 
religion recognizes the divine origin of the Old 
and the New Testaments, but its principal sacred 
book is the Koran, consisting of revelations al- 
leged to have been made by God to Mohammed. 
Mohammed therein denies the deity of Christ, 
but recognizes Moses and Jesus as the greatest 
prophets that had appeared before himself. As 
the Christians deified Christ, and Mohammed 
did not acknowledge the claim, his rallying cry 
was, "There is one God, and Mohammed is his 
prophet." 

(89) 



90 The Fundamentals 

Since there are few Mohammedans within 
reach of any considerations to be herein set forth, 
it is unnecessary to discuss that religious sys- 
tem. Indeed, were any conscientious Moham- 
medans listening they would at once appro- 
priate to themselves many of the arguments by 
which Christianity supports its special claim to 
supernaturally revealed information. 

i- 

Need and When without revelation the human spirit 

rational ex* 

pectation of seeks light upon the origin of the world, the pur- 
a reveia- p 0Se f ^ creation of man, the true standard 
of right and wrong, and inquires whether death 
be the end of life or a dark passage to another 
state of existence, no authorized answer can be 
found in Nature; no materials exist on which 
reason can work with complete confidence ; there- 
fore, beyond actual knowledge of visible facts, all 
must be conjecture. 

From this view point it must appear unjust 
in God to create such a being as man and leave 
him destitute of a religion; and since he has 
neither the faculties nor the knowledge ade- 
quate to an all-inclusive generalization, to im- 
pose upon him the task of searching it out for 



And Their Contrasts. 91 

himself would be cruel and unreasonable; and 
all the more so since he could never be certain 
that his conclusions were correct. 

From the assumption of the existence of God 
it follows that in the creation of man he had in 
view some end, in the accomplishment of which 
man was to be an instrument. But since man as 
a reasoning being acts under the influence of 
choice among possibilities, to cooperate with his 
Maker in achieving the purpose of his creation 
it is necessary that he should know His will. 
Also man needs an ideal which he may imitate, 
and to know his possible future. Experience and 
observation convince all men that they can im- 
prove themselves, but teach them that they can 
improve only in a small degree without a knowl- 
edge of God's will and his constant aid. 

Hence every attribute of God demands that he 
reveal himself: his wisdom, that he disclose his 
purpose in creation; his justice, that he make 
known his will (for the creation of reasonable 
beings establishes moral relations between them 
and the Creator) ; and his love, that he may 
not leave his earthly children longing for what 
he alone can bestow, the knowledge of his father- 
ly care and merciful goodness. 



92 The Fundamentals 

The history and condition of those parts of 
the world where none but themselves suppose 
the inhabitants possessed of a special revelation 
from God confirms this representative necessity, 
although it throws double responsibility upon 
Christians to carry that revelation to them, and 
to account for the fact that the God and Father 
of the spirits of all flesh has left them for so 
many ages without a true revelation. 
Primary ob- To prove that the Bible is a revelation or con- 
ject of t is ^ a j ns a reve i a tion of special information from 

lecture. 

God is not my primary object. I aim to show 
that (on the assumption that there is but one 
God, all powerful, all wise, everywhere present, 
the Creator of the universe and man, and that he 
is as holy and loving as he is powerful) a revela- 
tion is necessary and that it is rational to believe 
that there is one in the world. And, assuming 
this, I shall endeavor to make clear that the Bible 
furnishes the clearest evidences of divine origin 
and of fitness for the purpose of such a revela- 
tion. 

My personal belief is that the Bible contains 
a revelation upon the fundamentals of religion; 
and if this be not so, none exists. Further, 
I believe that no special information upon reli- 



And Their Contrasts. 93 

gious truth has been communicated by God to 
the world since the sacred books of Christian- 
ity were written, and that no religious teaching 
which contradicts the New Testament in its dis- 
tinctive principles or foundation facts is of di- 
vine authority or origin. 

The exposition of the grounds of this belief is 
my present object. 

II. 

The method of God in making a revelation to Afactgener- 
man must be in accordance with man's nature. ally over ~ 

looked. 

It is not sufficient to say that "God being infinite 
can reveal his will to man in an infinite number 
of ways," for he can only act upon man as man. 
On estimating the capacity of human nature 
by history, experience, and consciousness, I find 
it difficult to believe that man could receive from 
God definite facts other than by one of these 
mediums : By outward signs and symbols addi- 
tional to the phenomena of the natural world; 
by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit given to all 
men; by occasional or continuous inspiration to 
certain men in each generation who shall com- 
municate to others what they receive ; by inspira- 
tion in a definite period to special individuals 



symbols not 
adequate. 



94 The Fundamentals 

who shall preserve and record the revelations 
which they receive, to be communicated to all 
men and to serve as a perpetual standard of 
moral and religious truth. 
signs and Consider the first method: that of God's re- 

vealing his will and specific religious truth by 
outward symbols and signs, in addition to the 
regular order and movements of nature. 

1. That many peoples have believed in the 
existence of such signs and symbols is a fact of 
history. They have seen them in comets, falling 
stars, meteors, eclipses, and in meteorological 
changes. But to instructed minds it is evident 
that these are but parts of the established or- 
der, and that their supposed significance is imagi- 
nary. God's power, wisdom, and sovereignty are 
taught in nature, and some of his moral attri- 
butes dimly discovered; but this is not a revela- 
tion. 

2. Moreover, were there such symbols men 
could not interpret them without supernatural 
aid. They would be infinitely more difficult to 
be deciphered than the hieroglyphics of ancient 
Egypt. Such symbols would complicate an es- 
tablished order. The human mind cannot con- 
ceive it possible for God to preserve the har- 



And Their Contrasts. 95 

monious movements of nature and teach specific 
truth by additional symbols, or imagine any way 
by which man could distinguish the natural order 
from the superadded lessons of Providence. If 
the "divinity that shapes our ends" be no dream, 
such a method would be complicated with both 
the natural order and the providence of God. 

3. The history of revelation contained in the 
Bible confirms the truth of these views. At cer- 
tain times miracles were wrought for special pur- 
poses and the uniform order was infracted. The 
principles of God's administration had apparent- 
ly changed, and special revelations were neces- 
sary to explain the symbols. 

The force of this illustration is not destroyed 
by critical questionings concerning the "burn- 
ing bush," the "plagues of Egypt," the "pillar 
of cloud by day and of fire by night," and other 
astonishing phenomena described in the Old Tes- 
tament. If they were real occurrences, the con- 
sequences I point out follow; if mere myths or 
parables, as some cautiously and others flippant- 
ly say, the masterly depiction of the need of hu- 
man nature under such supposed circumstances 
remains. 

4. Were one discussing this subject in a com- 



96 The Fundamentals 

munity in the state of mind of that of the cit- 
izens of Rome when prodigies and portents were 
believed in, even by the greatest minds, with a 
few remarkable exceptions, discussions of this 
kind would be of weight. They are valuable 
here only as a part of the analysis of this sub- 
ject. 
Are ail men *phe second method, that all men are inspired, 

inspired 

with divine particularly poets, orators, and philosophers, is 

reveia- a doctrine favored by many. 

i. In a certain sense men, beasts, and all ani- 
mate things may be said to be inspired. But that 
is not the form of inspiration which some claim 
. for all men. The Bible teaches that all are in- 
spired to such a degree that their intellects may 
be stimulated and their moral natures purified; 
and that regeneration is the work of the Spirit. 
The subject before us, however, is neither of 
these forms of inspiration. It is a divine revela- 
tion of special truths and facts, some unknown 
to mankind until revealed; and others,— though 
rendered probable by the study of the constitu- 
tion of man and the physical universe, — without 
a divine confirmation, could only be subjects of 
doubt and debate. Did God inspire Shelley's 
atheistic poem of "Queen Mab," or Byron's las- 



And Their Contrasts. 97 

civious dreams? Has he inspired the philippics 
against the Bible, no less than the orations that 
have been uttered in its defense? Did he equal- 
ly inspire the holy eloquence of Paul, Augus- 
tine, Chrysostom, and the sacrilegious composi- 
tions of Voltaire and Rousseau? Did he inspire 
the atheistic addresses and writings of Charles 
Bradlaugh and the sermons of his evangelistic 
brother ? 

2. It is easy to determine this question by in- 
trospection. Every normal man has the evi- 
dence within himself that he is not inspired. It 
is vain to reply, as did one mystic, that "men 
are inspired and do not know that they are." 
For what benefit can be derived from a revela- 
tion which the subject is not aware that he pos- 
sesses ? 

3. Were all righteous, the doctrine of universal 
divine inspiration might be plausibly defended; 
but as they are not, it can form no stable rule. 
One might say, as did Mohammed and Joseph 
Smith, that the Holy Ghost teaches polygamy as 
a permanent law for the race ; and every absurd- 
ity might and would be propagated, and every 
crime sanctioned, under pretense of divine in- 
spiration. 

7 



98 The Fundamentals 



inspiration The third supposition is that a few are in- 

, spired in each generation, who, without a per- 

tn each gen- r ° * 

eration* manent record, are to communicate to others 
what they receive. There are three obstacles 
to this method, which seem fatal. 

1. It would require a constant miracle to con- 
vince the hearers of the reality of the inspira- 
tion claimed; a simple assertion would be in- 
sufficient. He who claims to have a revelation 
may be .deceived, rhapsodical, or insane. He 
may be an impostor, or may have artfully min- 
gled truth and error, — indeed, there have been 
those who put good for evil, and evil for good. 

2. There must be a constant succession of 
mighty works to prove a divine commission. By 
frequent occurrence miracles would lose their 
power to convince, while the order of nature and 
the providence of God would be involved, at 
least to finite minds, in inextricable confusion. 
Such a claim, if permanent, would become the 
foundation of priestcraft, and little freedom of 
action be left to mankind. 

3. The human memory could not retain the 
truth revealed. It would be forgotten or muti- 
lated ; and without priests and the working mira- 
cles, it would be impossible to disseminate the 



And Their Contrasts. 99 

word of God. These principles are illustrated 
in the history of the Jews, as well as in most 
forms of false religion and in distorted forms of 
Christianity. To maintain their authority the 
prophets were imbued with the power of work- 
ing miracles; but the people became so accus- 
tomed to them that plagues, famine, and wars, 
which destroyed thousands, were required to 
keep them true to the God of Israel. In the 
Roman Catholic Church the claim of infallibility 
has been set up, and the pardon of sin, the re- 
lief from purgatorial flames, the power of heal- 
ing diseases and working miracles, have laid the 
foundation of the most extraordinary institution 
for the consolidation and exercise of power that 
the world has seen. 

The fourth method is that of revelation in a 
limited period to particular persons, who shall 
preserve a record of their revelations, to be com- 
municated to all men and to c serve as a perma- 
nent standard of moral and religious truth. 

That this is the method of revelation in the 
Bible is apparent, except that there are two 
dispensations covering as many general periods, 
connected with each other by prophecy. The 
character of the two Testaments respectively 

LOFC. 



ioo The Fundamentals 

clearly distinguishes the periods. The grounds 
upon which the Bible is offered to the world as 
containing the only revelation by inspiration of 
God is its contents and the response of the hu- 
man heart to its truths, when fairly and fervently 
presented. 
The inspira- Concerning the kind and amount of the inspi- 
of the Bible. rat j on Q £ t j ie Bij^ man y disputes have arisen. 

Some have held that inspiration extended to the 
dictation "of every word in the original manu- 
scripts of the Bible. Unless the present manu- 
scripts are very unlike the originals, this would 
be inconsistent with the human element shown 
by each of the sacred writers. Some have main- 
tained that even the translators of the Bible were 
infallibly guided. Others have not assumed 
such a literal inspiration, but have held that no 
error on any subject referred to, either great or 
small, was in the original manuscript. This no 
one could positively know. 

Others maintain that the moral and spiritual 
teachings of the sacred books are infallible, but 
in other respects the inspired writers used their 
real or supposed knowledge for illustration or 
persuasion. 

It is unnecessary to diverge from our main 



And Their Contrasts. 101 

theme — 'The Fundamentals" — to discuss these 
systems, since the moral and spiritual benefits 
of the Christian revelation are accessible to all 
who believe that these sacred writings "truly 
express the mind and produce the word of God 
in the manner, and to the degree, which Divine 
Wisdom knew to be the need of the human 
race." 

The key to God's method of communication to The key to 
man is clearly set forth in a sentence in the Epis- _, . , 

■' r od tn the 

tie to the Romans: "I speak after the manner composition 
of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh." °J' h * B M** 
From the beginning to the end of the Scriptures 
this divine condescension is exhibited, and this 
principle acted upon. Various critics have rec- 
ognized and elaborately proved that the whole 
Jewish service was "a sublime and perfect ob- 
ject-teaching." The language, illustration, and 
forms of argument employed in the Bible are 
such as would be most intelligible and impress- 
ive to those to whom they were presented. 

Natural symbols were derived from the phys- 
ical features of Palestine and surrounding coun- 
tries; from the mountains and valleys, from 
brooks and rivers, from the swift-flowing Jor- 
dan and the silent abyss of the Dead Sea, from 



102 The Fundamentals 

flowers and fruits, from the beasts of the field 
and the forests, from the birds of the air and 
the fish of the sea, from the expanse of the 
Mediterranean and the resplendent heavens 
above it. Every agricultural implement, weap- 
on of war, domestic utensil, musical instrument, 
and every art and trade, furnishes illustrations ; as 
do judicial forms, military tactics, personal hab- 
its, social conventionalities, hygienic rules, and 
medical prescriptions. Natural phenomena are 
employed to signify the Spirit of God and the 
spirit of man, and upon the words "death" and 
"life" were superimposed meanings other than 
and remote from their literal significations. 

Each Bible writer retained his individuality. 
Thus every type of man is represented. Those 
who are most impressed by argumentation find 
many examples of it. Those reached through 
the imagination, the large class whose feelings 
must be wrought upon in order to induce action, 
and the practical who act primarily with respect 
to self-interest or to the fitness of things, can find 
in the work of the different writers style and 
matter suited to their temperaments. 

These characteristics furnish evidence that 
various portions of the Bible were written by 



And Thi r Contrasts. 103 

men acted upon by that "orm of inspiration which 
is bestowed upon the di .out of all nations, stim- 
ulating the moral faculties and the emotions; 
that other parts were written, in obedience to 
inspired direction, by men who wrote under the 
influence solely of their natural faculties ; but 
that vital revelations concerning the mind of 
God were so controlled that no error affect- 
ing their substance could creep into the com- 
munication as made to mankind. The whole 
presents to the world God's eternal truth with 
"substantial unity" and "circumstantial va- 
riety." 

In exhibiting the incomparable advantages of 
this method, I emphasize — 

First. Its clear exhibition of the human ele- Exhibition of 
ment, demonstrating that those who bring the * uma 
Divine messages have passed through all nat- 
ural and spiritual experiences ; born of the flesh, 
they were also born of the Spirit; they have 
endured trials, fallen and risen again; beginning 
in weakness, they have renewed their strength ; 
shrinking from death, upheld by God's presence, 
they have died in the certain hope of a new and 
unending life. 

Second. The record of miracles, supposed by 



104 



The Fundamentals 



Value of the 
record of 
miracles. 



some to be an incumbrance to faith, is of incal- 
culable value. 

The revelations made by God to men were 
confirmed by miraculous displays of divine wis- 
dom and power; and these, with their attendant 
circumstances, the moral and spiritual lessons 
which they taught, and the effect which they 
produced upon those who saw them, are de- 
scribed in the sacred writings. Their relation 
to revelation is more clearly set forth in the life 
of Christ and the apostles ; and in many instances 
a clear distinction is recognizable between mira- 
cles, prodigies, and natural consequences. The 
miracles of the New Testament were unparal- 
leled; they were performed at the will of an 
agent, and they accomplished a purpose worthy 
of divine interposition. 

A total eclipse of the sun is an ever-astonish- 
ing display of God's wisdom and power; but it 
is not a miracle, for it occurs in the established 
order of antecedents and consequents. To the ig- 
norant the natural often seems to be miraculous. 
In the early ages, when men did not observe na- 
ture, almost every natural process was supposed 
to be miraculous. Hence the gods of mythol- 
ogy were countless, and priestcraft flourished. 



And Their Contrasts. 105 

The feeding of five thousand by Christ, the 
giving, without natural means, of sight to the 
man born blind, the depositing and finding of 
the piece of money in the mouth of the fish, the 
instantaneous control of the winds and the waves, 
the raising of the dead, all illustrate and require 
a definition of a true miracle as an event in- 
volving the setting aside and contradiction of the 
established and uniform laws of antecedents and 
consequents; such events being produced at the 
will of an agent, not in the way of physical 
cause and effect. 

The purpose of the miracles was to demon- 
strate that God speaks, and the purpose and the 
effect were expressed in the words of Nicodemus, 
"Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come 
from God: for no man can do these miracles 
that thou doest, except God be with him!' They 
proved to many that Christ was a "teacher come 
from God," and his doctrines and words were 
heard and received on authority, and were not 
subject to the mutations attending individual 
opinion. 

It was necessary, not only that miracles should 
be wrought, but that they should be so extraor- 
dinary as to overcome belief in all forms of won- 



106 The Fundamentals 

der-working wrought by pagans, and to neg- 
ative the use made by the high priest and the 
Pharisees of the older record of miracles, which 
they claimed to be witnesses to their perverted 
views of the former dispensation, and also to 
overcome the universal skepticism of the Sad- 
ducees. The performance of miracles was the 
only way by which Christ could, instantly, over- 
come skepticism. 

The history of miracles is but an account of 
the means by which Christianity was established 
in the earth. A miracle without a divine reason 
is inconceivable and impossible, but a miracle for 
such a reason is worthy of a God. When the 
miracles which Christ had wrought were almost 
lost to sight and memory in the awful gloom of 
the tragedy of his cross, the crowning miracles 
of his resurrection and ascension infused his 
teachings with a vitality which remains till this 
day. 

When revelation was completed, and the seed 
planted had begun to take root, the further prog- 
ress of Christianity was left to the Word, the 
Spirit, to the preaching of the gospel and to the 
lives of its votaries. Miracles ceased because 
their work was completed. That they were be- 



r And Their Contrasts. 107 

yond nature gave them convincing power; and, 
after Christianity has thus obtained a hearing 
and its teachings are placed before men, should 
they not believe, "neither would they be per- 
suaded though one rose from the dead." 

Third. Next in value to the record of miracles The records 
is that of prophecy. To its evidence many of °f t ro P hec y 
the Jews submitted when miracles alone would men t. 
not have removed their mistaken view of the 
Messiah that "was to come." They believed 
Moses and the prophets, and felt that he who 
wrought such wondrous miracles must know the 
true meaning and proper application of the pas- 
sages upon which he based his claims to be the 
Messiah of whom Moses and the prophets did 
speak. It was by the record of prophecy that 
after his resurrection he encouraged his discon- 
solate disciples when he "talked with them by 
the way and opened to them the Scriptures," 
"beginning at Moses and all the prophets," 
showing them that, according to prophecy, 
Christ "ought to have suffered these things and 
to have entered into his glory." 

Fourth. The biographies of good and bad Biographies 
men, with their moral lessons, could not have °, g ° c 

7 bad men. 

been transmitted to future ages by any other 



108 The Fundamentals 

agency. Every possible variety of human nature 
is there delineated with inimitable skill, and the 
knowledge thereof thus disseminated is a per- 
manent intellectual and social guide which can- 
not be overestimated. 
inestimable Fifth. In what terms of value shall the worth 

tho f of the books of Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, 

many books. 

Ezekiel, and Daniel be stated? Religion and lit- 
erature would alike suffer by their loss. Inde- 
pendent of great basal truths, the maxims, apho- 
risms, and proverbs of prudence and morality 
scattered through the books of the Bible, helpful 
in the regulation of life and the determination of 
ever-recurring points of practice, could not have 
been preserved had they not been incorporated 
in the records of that people to whom the oracles 
of God were committed. 
Account of Sixth. The history of the progressive revela- 

progressive t j Qns ma( J e ^y Q Q £ fa man anc J Q f J^g providen- 
revelations. x 

tial dealings with men and nations fills what 
would otherwise be a dark void in the religious 
condition and growth of the world. It conducts 
the reader to the period when the race of man 
was in its infancy. He looks with pity upon the 
patriarchs groping in the starlight; he follows 
them until the moonlight of the Mosaic dispensa- 



And Their Contrasts. 109 

tion enlarges their views, relieves many of their 
difficulties, and furnishes them with minute rules 
of living, all designed to preserve their segrega- 
tion till their work was done, to impress them 
with the holiness of God and a devout hatred 
of idolatry, and to prepare them to discern "the 
True Light, which lighteth every man that Com- 
eth into the world." After tracing such a grad- 
ual unfolding, he recognizes the culmination of 
revelation in the appearance, life, character, 
suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of 
Jesus Christ. 

Seventh. The record in manuscript originally, Dissemina- 
and in printed book in later times, has made pos- ' * . 

r x publication 

sible the presentation of the internal evidence and trans- 
which supplies the place of inaccessible oral wit- lation% 
nesses. It is the best evidence possible in any 
case after the original witnesses and those who 
knew them have died. 

The same conditions admit of its translation 
into various languages, which has wonderfully 
(and never so much as now) aided in the dis- 
semination of the truths which it contains and 
the accomplishment of the purpose of divine 
revelation. 

Eighth. From the fact that the revelation of 



no 



The Fundamentals 



Permanent 
standard of 
moral and 
religious 
truth. 



Admits of 
study and 
use in pri> 
vate devo* 
Hon. 



God is recorded, it becomes a permanent stand- 
ard of moral and religious truth, which can be 
examined, appealed to, and preserved. What- 
ever opinions may be held of its teachings, they 
are in the text, and there they will remain for- 
ever. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his 
own mind." And so cogent and luminous are the 
doctrines of the Bible with respect to the essen- 
tials of religious faith and the distinctions of mor- 
als, that there has been comparatively little di- 
vergence as to what is taught in the Bible. True 
believers are interested to preserve it from mate- 
rial errors. Upon the whole the divergences of 
sects have been favorable to its preservation, for 
"mutual jealousy will prevent the variations of 
the text or the interpolation of error" ; while the 
hundreds of passages quoted from it by its an- 
cient enemies and preserved in their writings are 
strong corroborations of its authenticity. 

Ninth. In this form the revelation of God ad- 
mits of being studied, employed in private devo- 
tion, as a text-book in the house of God, and 
in the instruction of youth. 

The special promises contained in the Bible, — 
to the poor, the persecuted, the friendless, to the 
penitent prodigal, to those who are bowed be- 



And Their Contrasts. in 

neath the weight of grief, to parents, children, 
the widow and the fatherless, to the sick and the 
dying, — are "exceeding great and precious," and 
are distributed throughout the Holy Book so 
profusely and in so many different forms of state- 
ment that the most highly instructed and spirit- 
ually-minded Christian or the weakest believer 
may find what is exactly adapted to his recep- 
tivity and deepest need. 

Tenth. By this means believers may escape the Protection 
domination of priestcraft and the subtle decep- a £ amst 

the twin 

tions of superstition. "If they speak not accord- monsters 
ing to his word, there is no light in them." That priestcraft 

and super' 

by some the Bible itself has been made a fetich, stit i on , 
is evidence only that every instrument of knowl- 
edge or piety may be perverted to base or per- 
nicious uses. He who understands that only 
those parts of the Old Testament which agree 
with the spirit and teachings of the New are 
binding upon the Christian, will not blindly sur- 
render his judgment or fall into "divers super- 
stitions." 

Eleventh. The indispensable and imperishable Preserves the 
contents of the Bible are its moral and spiritual of the "if e 
teachings and its divine promises culminating in andcharac- 
assurance of immortal life, terojjesus. 



H2 The Fundamentals 

The portraiture of the life and character of 
Jesus Christ could not have been preserved un- 
mutilated in the memory of mankind without a 
perpetual miracle. Divergent views thereof are 
not unknown, and without the indestructible rec- 
ord they would have become innumerable long be- 
fore the present century, and the image of God 
in Christ would have been blurred or obliterated 
from human memory. When no church is acces- 
sible and jno "father confessor," pastor, or Chris- 
tian brother is near, when darkness and despond- 
ency increase, the Holy Book is more than a 
talisman; it is the bread of life; for it contains 
the words of Him who said, "The words that I 
speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." 

The best statement in the English language of 
the necessity of more than a belief in God is 
by John Morley, who perceives the value of that 
which perhaps he does not possess. It is from 
a passage in his "Life of Voltaire/' wherein he 
pictures the failure of deism. "The common 
people are wont to crave a revelation, or else 
they find atheism a rather better synthesis than 
any other. They either cling to the miraculously 
transmitted message with its hopes of recom- 
pense, and its daily communication of the divine 



And Their Contrasts. 113 

voice in prayer or sacrament, or else they make 
a world which moves through space as a black 
monstrous ship with no steersman. The bare 
deistic idea of a being endowed at once with sov- 
ereign power and sovereign clemency, with might 
that cannot be resisted and justice that cannot 
be impugned, who loves man with infinite ten- 
derness, yet sends him no word of comfort and 
gives him no way of deliverance, is too hard a 
thing for those who have to endure the hardships 
of the brutes, but yet preserve the intelligence of 
men." Not less hard is the burden upon those who 
cannot be classed among the "common people," 
if they are without God and hope in the world. 

Yet, whether learned or ignorant, rich or poor, 
honored or unknown, the words of life are pro- 
vided for all who sympathize with the spirit of 
John Greenleaf Whittier : 

We search the world for truth, we cull, 
The good, the pure, the beautiful, 
From graven stone and written scroll, 
From the old flower-fields of the soul, 
And, weary seekers for the best, 
We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said 
ts in the book our mother read. 
8 



V. 

FALSE AND DISTORTED FORMS OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 



V. 

FALSE AND DISTORTED FORMS OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

Among the most striking features of the New 
Testament are predictions of the rise of false 
prophets, false apostles, and false Christs. 

"Beware of false prophets," said Christ in the R^ of false 
Sermon on the Mount ; and terrifying is the pas- 

"* ° x prophesied. 

sage in which he declares that he will not recog- 
nize many who have prophesied in his name, and 
in his name done wonderful works. Toward the 
close of his life he declared, "Many false prophets 
shall rise, and shall deceive many/' "For there 
shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and 
shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch 
that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very 
elect." "For many shall come in my name, say- 
ing, I am Christ ; and shall deceive many." 

Paul writes: "The Spirit speaketh expressly, 
that in the latter times some shall depart from 
the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits." . . , 
"Speaking lies in hypocrisy." Also, "For such 

(»7) 



n8 The Fundamentals 

are false apostles, deceitful workers, transform- 
ing themselves into the apostles of Christ." 

Peter, in the Second Epistle, speaks of false 
prophets and describes their punishment. John, 
in the First Epistle, affirms that "many false 
prophets are gone out into the world," and, in 
the Book of Revelation, commends the Church 
at Ephesus for trying those "which say they are 
apostles, and are not." It was with reference to 
such that Jude exhorted Christians that they 
"should earnestly contend for the faith which was 
once delivered unto the saints. For there are cer- 
tain men crept in unawares, ungodly men, turning 
the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and deny- 
ing the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." 
False Mes- Christ's predictions of the coming of false 
siahs in the jy[ ess ^hs were fulfilled among the Jews at inter- 

early cen- 
turies, vals for centuries. 1 Among the first was Simeon, 

a bandit, who preyed upon Romans in Palestine, 

finally proclaimed himself the Messiah, and was 

"elected King of the Jews." He assumed the 

^he authorities for the ancient instances here ad- 
duced are general and ecclesiastical history and biogra- 
phy, but I am particularly indebted for facts concerning 
certain "false Messiahs" to an elaborate article on the 
subject by Professor James H. Worman, in McClin- 
tock and Strong's Cyclopaedia. 



And Their Contrasts. 119 

name of Bar-Cocheba, thus connecting himself 
with the star prophesied by Balaam. In fact, 
"he pretended to be the star sent by heaven to 
restore his nation to its ancient liberty and glory." 
His enemies changed his name to Bar-Coxeba, 
which means son of a lie. He raised and organ- 
ized an army, coined money and inscribed his 
name upon it, sent a forerunner (analogous to 
John the Baptist) to proclaim him Messiah, and 
took Jerusalem 132 A.D. The Emperor Hadrian 
sent an army against him, under Julius Severus, 
which caused him to take refuge in Bither, which 
was besieged, the slaughter there and elsewhere 
being enormous. During this rebellion and for 
three years afterwards Judea was desolated and 
five hundred and eighty thousand Jews were slain 
by the Romans. 

In the siege of Bither, Bar-Cocheba, alias Cox- 
eba, was killed. In the island of Crete arose, in 
434 A.D., an individual called Moses Cretensis. 
He drew a multitude after him by the pretense 
that he was a second Moses, and his fanaticism 
increased until he commanded his followers, in or- 
der to accompany him to Mount Zion, to plunge 
from a rock into the sea. Many leaped, but when 
the others saw them drown the multitude drew 



120 The Fundamentals 

back and scattered. They sought for "Moses," 
but he had incontinently fled. 

In the reign of Justinian, about 529 A.D., the 
Jews and Samaritans rebelled against him, and 
acclaimed a certain Julian king and the long- 
looked-for Messiah. The emperor dispatched an 
army against him, which prevailed, and, as in 
the case of Bar-Cocheba, thousands were killed. 
The "Messiah" was taken prisoner and executed. 

About 721, in Spain, a man named Serenus 

announced himself to be the Messiah ; multitudes 

followed him, but "their hopes and his claims 

came to naught." 

Many false J n the twelfth century no less than twelve Mes- 

Messiahs in . * % a i , • j 

M . siahs appeared, and several countries were vexed 

the twelfth L r 

century. with them. One in France ( about 1 1 37 ) was killed, 
as were many adherents. The next year the Per- 
sians were afflicted with a similar claim put for- 
ward by a Jew, who played the role the expecta- 
tion of which had caused the Pharisees to reject 
Christ, namely, that the Messiah was to lead an ar- 
my and achieve independence for the Jews from all 
other powers. He raised a large army, but fanat- 
icism quailed before disciplined armies and sys- 
tematic war. He was slain, and probably no body of 
insurgents was ever treated with more cruelty. 



And Their Contrasts, 121 

About twenty years later excitement prevailed 
in Spain, caused by a Jew who demanded alle- 
giance to his Messiahship. His conduct was so 
extraordinary that some supposed him to be in- 
sane. But, as is frequently the case, the very 
deeds that led the judicious to believe him dis- 
traught only strengthened his cause with the pop- 
ulace. It led the fanatical, the imaginative, the 
superstitious to believe in him the more strongly, 
and the lovers of turbulence to follow him more 
willingly ; but "the great body of the Jewish na- 
tion believed in him." Under his leadership al- 
most all the Jews in Spain were extirpated. 

The astonishing history of false Messiahs pre- a semi-iudi- 
sents one semi-ludicrous phase. In 11 67 a Mes- us phase 
siah appeared in Arabia, who professed to work 
miracles and attracted many followers. As soon 
as the attention of the authorities was directed 
to the rapidly spreading movement, search was 
made for the "Messiah." He was captured, but 
his followers fled. When brought before the 
Arabian king he was questioned as to his claims, 
and replied that he was a "prophet sent from 
God." He was so confident either in his own 
claims or in his power to impose upon the king, 
that when asked what sign he could show to 



122 The Fundamentals 

confirm his mission, he answered, "Cut off my 
head and I will return to life again." The king, 
promising to believe in his mission if he re- 
turned, took him at his word and ordered him 
decapitated. This effectual checking of his am- 
bition dispersed his followers. 

In the same year, in the kingdom of Fez, Da- 
vid Alrui, another false prophet arose. He in- 
volved all the Jews in that country in persecu- 
tion and every form of trouble. 

The next in order was a Jewish "Messiah" 
dwelling beyond the Euphrates, who was fol- 
lowed, as had been his predecessors, by vast mul- 
titudes. He claimed to have been leprous, and to 
have been cured in one night. He was, however, 
put to death ; and his countrymen, whether or not 
they believed in his claims, were cruelly persecuted. 

In 1 1 74 a second Persian pretender arose. He 
sought to influence the common people. Though 
many would not believe, their protests brought 
no exemption from persecution. Two years aft- 
erwards David Almasser agitated Moravia by his 
pretense to be the "Messiah." He scouted the 
idea that he could be captured, for he claimed to 
have the power of making himself invisible: but 
orders were given to take him, visible or invis- 



And Their Contrasts. 123 

ible. He was soon seized and put to death. At 
this time Jews were not killed, but a heavy fine 
was exacted from them. 

In 1 1 99 one of the most famous of these im- 
postors appeared in Persia. He was known as 
David el-David. He already had wide reputa- 
tion as a magician, and undoubtedly was a man 
of learning. He taught that all his predecessors 
were impostors or lunatics, he alone being the 
true Messiah. He was warlike and raised an 
army, rebelling against the king, but was seized 
and imprisoned. He succeeded in escaping, but 
was retaken and decapitated. Thousands of 
Jews who had taken his part were slaughtered. 

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there False Mes- 
were not many claimants for the Messiahship, but 

fourteenth^ 

much time was taken up in calculation of the fifteenth, 
time of the actual coming of the Messiah. Sev- and six " 

111*11 r> teenth cen- 

eral rabbis had agreed upon 1358 as the year; tur j eSm 
but, strange to say, no one took advantage of 
the prediction to offer himself as its fulfillment, 
and toward the close of the fifteenth century in 
Spain and Portugal the situation of the Jews be- 
came worse than it had been for ages. The 
Catholics determined to convert them, and under 
the pressure of fear two hundred thousand Jews 



124 The Fundamentals 

submitted to baptism. Under these circum- 
stances a Jew of high renown endeavored to 
reanimate the hopes of his people, and fixed 
upon the year 1503 as the date of their deliv- 
erance. A German rabbi, resident within the 
Austrian dominions, appeared as the forerunner 
in 1502. He called the people to remove to the 
East, tore down his house and declared that all 
who followed him should live in peace under the 
reign of the "King of the Jews." Many pre- 
pared to follow him, but his sudden death put 
an end to his schemes. 

In the reign of Charles V. a man calling him- 
self David Reubeni secured audience of the King 
of Portugal. He represented that he had come 
from India as ambassador of his brother, "the 
King of the Jews," to propose an alliance for the 
recovery of the Holy Land from the Mussulman. 
He brought papers, and found favor with Pope 
Clement VII. , receiving distinguished treatment 
from the papal court. With him affiliated Solo- 
mon Molcho, a Portuguese Christian, who "open- 
ly apostatized to Judaism." He traveled for 
a time with David, but wishing to see the Holy 
Land departed for the East. On his return he 
visited the pope, who showed him more favor 



And Their Contrasts. 



"5 



"False 
Christs" in 
the seven- 
teenth cen- 
tury. 



than David had received. When he and David 
met they went to the seat of Charles V. to con- 
vert him, but the king threw them into prison as 
heretics and dangerous. David escaped, but Sol- 
omon was burned at the stake. 

In 1 615 a false Christ arose in the East Indies 
and was followed by Portuguese Jews, who were 
numerous there. Another appeared in Europe 
in 1624, who promised to destroy Rome, over- 
throw the kingdom of Antichrist and the Turk- 
ish Empire. Sabathai Zebi, the greatest of the 
Jewish pretenders, arrived in 1666. He for- 
sook the Jews and became a Mohammedan, but 
was finally beheaded. Nevertheless, he had al- 
ready formed a sect which exists to this day. 

In the latter part of the seventeenth century 
there were several others, and they continue to 
arise. One appeared in Germany in 1872, and 
another is now operating in India. 

Wishing to separate from other Christians in Distorted 
order to "unite Moses and Christ," a large num- 
ber of Jewish Christians divided into two classes, 
one of which derived its name from Ebion and 
deserves special notice. He taught that Christ 
was the son of Joseph as well as Mary. He ob- 
served the rites of Moses, and also the supersti- 



forms of 
Christiani- 
ty in the ear- 
liest centu- 
ries. 



126 The Fundamentals 

tious ceremonies of the ancestors of the Jews. 
One of the many sects which early sprang up, 
originating in Asia, maintained the philosophy 
of the East in regard to the origin of the uni- 
verse; and another, founded among the Egyp- 
tians, while holding that philosophy, added to it 
various "monstrosities, opinions, and principles 
current in Egypt." 

These were the forerunners of the Gnostics, 
whose rapid spread threatened to cost the Chris- 
tian Church its life. Some of the sects became 
exceedingly corrupt: Rome was the center of 
several comprehended under the general name 
of Gnostics. The united forces of Christians 
and Platonic philosophers, — at one on several 
vital points, — caused Gnostics to lose their influ- 
ence. 

Then Manes, a Persian, established a system 
which was a compound of Christianity and the 
ancient philosophy of the Persians. He took the 
ground that the God of the Israelites was the 
"prince of darkness," and souls which believed 
Jesus Christ to be the Son of God should and 
did cease from worshiping him. 

In the latter part of the third century another 
sect appeared, whose principles forbade marriage, 



And Their Contrasts. 127 

the eating of flesh, and whatever was gratifying 
to the senses. Its founder denied the resurrec- 
tion of the body, and excluded from heaven in- 
fants who died before they could reason, on the 
ground that they had not earned it by victorious 
conflict. 

The most famous originator of new doctrines Sabeiiius, 
was Sabellius, who diverged from orthodox be- Arius * and 

Pelagius* 

lievers with respect to the Trinity. The fourth 
century brought on a terrible contest between 
Arius and Alexander, — the occasion primarily 
of the convening of the Council of Nice. The 
decision was against Arius, whose followers 
might still have been a mighty power and have 
modified the doctrines of the Christian Church, 
had they not split into numerous sects hating 
each other. This division caused the formation 
of the much controverted Athanasian creed. 

An issue concerning the nature of Christ, 
raised by Pelagius, threatened to be almost as 
inimical to the unity, moral power, and growth 
of the Church as was the controversy between 
Arius and Alexander. Between Pelagius and 
the great Augustine was carried on a contro- 
versy of far-extending consequences. 

The sixth century was notable because of the 



128 The Fundamentals 

rise of a sect called the Tri-theists, as they made 
the Trinity to consist of three gods; this sect 
also divided into two. 
From the The nex t century was perplexed by controver- 

sixth to the . 1111 «tt • 

* i*h „ sies as t° whether there be one or two wills in 

twelfth cen- 
tury, the person of Christ. In the eighth century 

Adalbert, a Frenchman, — consecrated a bishop 
against the will of Boniface, — brought forward 
an epistle which he asserted was written by Je- 
sus Christ. and brought down from heaven by 
Michael, the archangel. Another theory about 
this epistle is that "it fell down at Jerusalem, 
and was. found by the archangel Michael ; that 
a priest transcribed it and sent it to another 
priest, who took it into Arabia ; and, finally, that 
after passing through many hands it reached 
Rome. Various other false statements were 
proved against Adalbert. 

The tenth century inflicted vast evils upon 
Christianity without developing many new sects. 
This was the period when, because of the great 
number of canonized and beatified saints, new 
festal days, forms of worship, and religious rites 
were imposed upon the people. The eleventh 
century was not notable for new heresies; the 
twelfth, however, was a period of fermentation, 



And Their Contrasts. 



129 



century like 
the iron and 
the clay in 
Nebuchad- 
nezzar's 
image. 



the germs of the final separation of multitudes The twelfth 
from the Roman Catholic Church being in solu- 
tion. Most of those who desired to reform the 
prevailing religion did not understand the Bible, 
and historians agree that they were "as far from 
the religion of Christ as taught in the New Tes- 
tament, as from Roman Catholicism. " This cen- 
tury, however, was marked by the rise of a gen- 
uine reformation, in which was born the sect of 
the Waldenses, who endured severe persecutions 
for centuries, but still exist. About this time the 
most singular religious fanaticism appeared. A 
man named Eon of Bretagne, having heard pro- 
nounced these words, "Per Earn by him who will 
come to judge the quick and the dead," con- 
cluded that he was the one who was to judge 
the quick and the dead. This mild lunatic died 
in prison. He is described as a wealthy noble- 
man of pleasing address, who drew a great num- 
ber after him ; and with these he traveled rapidly 
and with display over the country. Many of his 
followers were excommunicated as heretics and 
burned at the stake, according to the custom of 
the age. 

The thirteenth century was marred by fierce Ho ^orsofthe 

thirteenth 

and bloody conflicts. New sects arose, agreeing 
9 



century. 



130 The Fundamentals 

in the charge that Romanism was false, but dis- 
agreeing in nearly everything else. This was the 
century which gave birth to the inquisition; yet 
the more the people were persecuted the more 
frequently new sects appeared, some outrageous- 
ly wicked and others the consummation of ab- 
surdity, some harmless and a few meritorious. 
One evil sect was known as the Brethren and 
Sisters of the Free Spirit. They were prac- 
tically pantheists. Some of their aphorisms 
were: "All created objects are nothing"; "Good 
men w r ill be converted unto God himself and de- 
tached from the visible universe" ; "What the 
Scripture says of Christ is true of every godly 
man." 

In the middle of that century multitudes were 
led astray, adopting abnormal and depraving 
doctrines. They claimed that by protracted con- 
templation the procreative instincts of nature 
might be eradicated. In their secret assemblies 
they discarded all raiment, and taught demoraliz- 
ing practices. Some went so far as to teach that 
"a godlike man, or one who is closely united to 
God, cannot sin, do what he may." Others took 
the ground that "after the union of the soul with 
God the emotions and desires arising in it are 



And Their Contrasts. 131 

acts and aspirations of God himself, and, there- 
fore, they could do anything, however criminal, 
because God is above all law." 

In the fourteenth century the Quietists ap- The c****ry 

11 ill* 1 before the 

peared, who taught that by retirement and con- Reforma . 
centration of their gaze for hours upon some turn. 
part of their persons a divine light would be 
caused to beam forth from the mind itself. This 
they affirmed was "the glory of God and equiv- 
alent to the transfiguration light of Christ." The 
Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit secured 
a few learned men, undoubtedly sincere ; but oth- 
ers of this sect, which continued many years, 
were impostors. 

In the sixteenth century the great Reforma- The e reat 
tion changed the whole situation to such an ex- J° r ' 
tent as to require the history of Christianity to 
be treated, not under one or two heads, but, sepa- 
rately, under the Roman, the Greek, the Luther- 
an, and the Reformed Church, the Mennonites 
(otherwise called the Anabaptists) and the So- 
cinians. Since that time numerous communions 
have arisen, some of great usefulness, others ab- 
surd and harmful. 

The wild sects which have been sketched can 
be paralleled by the distortions and corruptions of 



132 The Fundamentals 

true Christianity in the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland, and the United States. For 
the past one hundred years there has not been in 
the United States a decade without "false Christs" 
appearing, most of whom have been able to ex- 
tort from their adherents sufficient funds to en- 
able them to live in luxury, and some of them 
to carry on extensive enterprises and accumu- 
late great wealth. 

The shakers. The sect of Shakers should be regarded sim- 
ply as an eccentricity, its method of service and 
enforced celibacy being peculiarities of its found- 
ers. Immorality cannot be charged against them. 

The Oneida The Oneida Community demands more atten- 
ommumy ^ l0rv ThSs institution was founded by John 

and its ab- 
normalities. Humphrey Noyes, of good birth, his father be- 
ing a representative in Congress, and his mother 
an aunt of one of the presidents of the United 
States. He studied at Dartmouth, took the the- 
ological courses at Andover and Yale, and in 
ji833 was licensed to preach. This license was 
speedily revoked, as he professed a second con- 
version and belief in the dual sexual nature of 
God. Noyes maintained several propositions, 
one of which is that as Christians are required 
to pray "Thy will be done on earth as it is in 



And Their Contrasts. 133 

heaven," as there is no marriage in heaven 
there should be no marriage on earth. He also 
held a doctrine of Christian perfection much like 
that of the doctrine of the Brothers and Sisters 
of the Free Spirit. He held that perfect Chris- 
tians can do no wrong; that shame is caused by 
sin, and that the first duty of the perfect Chris- 
tian is to eradicate shame. In lieu of marriage 
he had a community system of such peculiar 
nature and so contrary to the natural instincts 
of modesty that it must not be described. A 
species of stirpiculture was rigidly enforced, and 
the community rather than the parents trained 
the children. His doctrines are stated with as- 
tonishing frankness in The Berean. His expo- 
sitions of the Scripture were marvelously ingen- 
ious, and his ability as a financier was unusual. 
He was a student and an autocrat. He taught 
that Christians should use no medicine, and that 
they would not die. His first settlement was at 
Poultney, Vermont. Another branch of the com- 
munity was established at Wallingford, Conn. 
His communities were not composed of persons 
of inferior intellect exclusively, but included 
many much above average intelligence. There 
were classes in Greek, and in music, and the 



134 The Fundamentals 

musical performances were superior. They will- 
ingly explained their system, and seemed per- 
fectly frank. 

The sister of the founder informed me that 
in removing from Poultney, Vermont, to Oneida, 
some of the members were drowned in the lake, 
and the survivors were troubled in mind as to 
whether those drowned were firm in the faith, 
or were not genuine and thus allowed to perish. 
In 1875 people in central and western New York 
began to discuss the peculiar sexual relations of 
the Oneida Community, and wide opposition 
arose, compelling the abolition of their substitute 
for marriage. In financial and domestic matters 
the cooperative plan was employed. In 1882 the 
whole property of this community was valued at 
about six hundred thousand dollars, but since 
that period various manufactories have been es- 
tablished, and its property is now said to be 
worth at least two million dollars ; and there are 
upward of three hundred persons in the com- 
munity. 

I know of no stronger illustration of the pow- 
er of a shrewd mind to deceive itself and others 
by the use of the Scriptures wrested to one's 
own purpose, than is afforded by the career of 



And Their Contrasts. 135 

John H. Noyes. Licentiousness protected by a 
spurious holiness was the basis of his social sys- 
tem. 

The Buchanites were the followers of Elspeth singular dis- 

-r-»i /o« \ «• « 1 • • tortion of 

Buchan (or Simpson), a religious enthusiast in christianit 
Scotland, who claimed to be "the woman in Rev- in England. 
elation in whom the light of God was restored 
to men." 

The sect of "Muggletonians" is an English 
product, founded in 1651 by Lodowick Muggle- 
ton and John Reeve, who assumed to have divine 
inspiration and proclaimed themselves the "two 
witnesses" referred to in Revelation. 

Joanna Southcote, who announced herself to 
be the inspired woman of Revelation who was 
predestined to give birth to the new Messiah, at- 
tracted in England about one hundred thousand 
disciples. Ten days after the date which she 
had predicted for the birth of Shiloh, she died 
of dropsy ; nevertheless, her disciples maintained 
their faith in her supernatural authority and des- 
tiny, and some of her followers believe that she 
will return to the earth. 

Mormonism originated in 1830. Its mission- Mormonism. 
aries visit every land; its power is autocratic 
over its devotees; its existence in eight states 



136 The Fundamentals 

gives it wide political and commercial influence, 
and it is occupying the attention of the Senate of 
the United States, on which devolves the respon- 
sibility of deciding whether, without violating 
the principle of the non-union of Church and 
State, and the freedom of religion, imbedded in 
the Constitution of the United States, it can 
eject a legally elected senator from his seat in 
the senate on the ground that he is one of the 
apostles of the Church of Latter-day Saints. 
Mormonism professes to be a form of Christian- 
ity, and accepts the Old and the New Testaments. 
It also professes faith in the Book of Mormon, 
and believes in revelations adding to or explain- 
ing the contents of the Old and the New Testa- 
ments and the Book of Mormon. 

The Book of Mormon is undoubtedly of hu- 

bold intjyos- 

tur€t man origin, as are also "Revelations and Cove- 

nants/ 7 While its code of morals is austere, it 
soon sanctioned and practiced polygamy, and its 
administration was long privy to "bloody deeds 
and death." Many of its doctrines concerning 
God, its interpretations of Scripture, its views 
of woman, and its elaborate scheme to accomplish 
her salvation are intrinsically absurd. The alpha- 
bet in which its supposed divine revelation, 



A bald and 



And Their Contrasts. 137 

the Book of Mormon, was printed is an impos- 
ture of transparent character, a production of 
ignorant cunning. 

Its history under its principal leaders, Joseph 
Smith, Jr., and Brigham Young, furnishes to 
discerning minds, whether Christian or not, abun- 
dant evidence that it could not have originated by 
the inspiration of God. When it built polygamy 
upon the imperfect development of the ancient 
Jewish Church, and professed to believe in Jesus 
Christ, who declared polygamy and free divorce 
to have been allowed "because of the hardness 
of the hearts of the people," it attempted to sub- 
stitute darkness for light. Yet it had little diffi- 
culty in making converts, and still makes them 
in foreign lands, though it accomplishes less in 
the United States in proportion to the number of 
missionaries than any other body having any 
pretense to an organization. 

Its method on entering a new community is to its missions 
conceal its peculiar ideas, preach generally ac- 

gels of 

cepted Christian doctrines with earnestness and u g htr 
vigor, according to the intellectual capacity of 
its missionaries ; and not until it has won for 
itself confidence by this method does it begin to 
insinuate its peculiar, and for the greater part 



nes as "an- 



138 The Fundamentals 

demoralizing, views of God, and the semi-pagan 
conditions upon which, as they maintain, an im- 
mortal life of purity and blessedness depends. 

That many Mormons are conscientious and 
live according to their belief cannot be doubted, 
but that the general spirit of the whole institu- 
tion is of the earth earthy is self-evident. Its 
existence is a demonstration that human nature 
undergoes no modification, and the rise in the 
light of Christianity of such a superstition, that 
might naturally have arisen in Arabia or Egypt, 
shows the necessity of so maintaining pure and 
rational Christianity as to satisfy the aspirations 
of all who are religiously inclined. 

The phenomenon that where it exists Mormon- 
ism can make no converts among the Gentiles, 
and that Christians are making few converts 
from Mormonism, deserves profound reflection 
and examination. If the first is not wonderful, 
why does the second member of this problem 
exist ? 

The Reformed Church of the Latter-day 
Saints believes all the superstitions contained in 
the Book of Mormon, and the early revelations 
of Joseph Smith, Jr., and in the face of over- 
whelming evidence denies that Joseph Smith was 



And Their Contrasts. 139 

a polygamist. Its members do not believe in 
nor practice polygamy, but everything distinctive 
in their creed is antagonistic to Christianity, and 
the Book of Mormon and early revelations as 
held by them are the same mixture of supersti- 
tion, fiction, and cunning which underlies the 
Mormonism of Utah. 

Dowieism. 

John Alexander Dowie was born in Scotland. Early career 
He studied a little while in some departments of °f Do ™"- 
Edinburgh University, went to Australia as a clerk, 
was a sort of lay evangelist in a Congregational 
Church, and later became a pastor. He is a born 
ruler and is a good speaker, — except when van- 
ity renders him ridiculous or anger makes him 
venomous and reckless. While in Australia he 
avowed certain peculiar doctrines, one of which 
is that all disease is of the devil, and that, as 
Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, the 
right kind of faith will lead Christ to expel dis- 
ease. He created much excitement, and many 
professed to be healed of their diseases. When 
he had made enemies by attacks upon the Church- 
es, and had had trouble with the courts of justice, 



14° The Fundamentals 

and (he says) being called of God to a greater 
work, he left Australia and came to California. 
There he preached, and claimed that healings 
confirmed his mission. Those who were lame 
and walked after he laid hands upon them en- 
dorsed his claims and sounded his praises; but 
those who did not recover kept silent, as is the 
case with those who take "cure-all" patent medi- 
cines and patronize quack doctors. When he 
appeared A in California he was willing and 
anxious to cooperate with the Young Men's 
Christian Association and the various Churches, 
but they soon found that he was too erratic in 
doctrine, too self-glorifying in spirit, too extrav- 
agant in speech and in magnifying his cures. 
Arrival and Not meeting with the success or reverence he 
desired, he came to Chicago, where he showed 
financial ability, attracted much attention, opened 
a bank, and maintained what was practically a 
hospital. For ordinary use he bought an old 
church in an eligible location, and hired the best 
halls for special occasions. The afflicted went 
to him and declared themselves healed; but not 
a few died, while many went away neither better 
nor worse than when they came. The deaths, the 
spread of contagious disease among his adher- 



career in 

Chicago. 



And Their Contrasts. 141 

ents, the rumors of neglect of, or scant courtesy 
to, the incurables, caused opposition which he 
fed by attacking prominent men, institutions, and 
Churches, denouncing them without stint, mak- 
ing statements he could not prove, and often 
exaggerating those having a basis of truth. He 
impeached motives and developed a vulgar style 
of speech, which disgusted a large part of the 
community. He was drawn into the courts, but 
having abundance of money employed skillful 
counsel, and continued in his boisterous and 
winning way. 

Chicago, however, had made itself as dis- 
agreeable to him as he had made himself to 
Chicago; and, having with consummate shrewd- 
ness secured a fine site, he built a city, estab- 
lished manufactories, and made, in fact, a large 
amount of money by sales of leases of lots, and 
on paper an immense amount more. 

His first serious rebuff was being condemned Dowu>$ latet 
by the court to pay his brother-in-law about one 

x J prospects. 

hundred thousand dollars, which the latter claimed 
he had obtained under misrepresentations and 
non-kept promises. His next was the humilia- 
tion of having his property placed for a time in 
the hands of a receiver, at the suit of multitu- 



142 



The Fundamentals 



dinous creditors. Signs of sedition among his 
followers, deaths of his members because of lack 
of proper medical treatment, the death of his 
own daughter from burns, and other things, have 
pointed to the final collapse of his more than 
gaseous but less than solid enterprise. 
someo/Dow- He declares himself the prophet who was to 
iSsabsurdi- come in the spirit of Elijah, professes to have 

** es * 

had revelations, has appointed apostles—himself 

the first — #nd in many respects has paralleled the 
development of the Mormon hierarchy. For the 
last few years he has traveled extensively, mak- 
ing disciples here and there, and seeking to 
allure the wealthy. In New York he presented 
a spectacle of vulgarity, conceit, and blasphemous 
pretension which disgusted his audiences. But 
to his own people he represented his visit to New 
York as a grand success. In England also he 
failed. 

There is no reason to believe that his prayers 
have special power with God; the God of all 
mercy and consolation will hear the honest 
prayers of his devotees. That his doctrine con- 
cerning the origin of all disease is false can be 
proved by the Bible and science; that if it is 
true he had not the faith he boasted, is proved 



His career 
demon- 
strates his 
claimsfalse. 



And Their Contrasts. 143 

by the fact that he cannot "raise the dead/' or 
"speak with other tongues/" "give sight to those 
born blind/' or "heal all that come/' as did 
Christ and the apostles. In his general preach- 
ing he teaches morality and divine worship with 
vigor and consistency. He recommends econ- 
omy to his votaries, yet lives and moves and has 
his being in luxury; preaches humility, yet dis- 
plays extreme arrogance; and if one foot is 
planted on the rock of faith, the other is on the 
quicksands of superstition. 

Dowie is no prophet; he bears no relation 
to Elijah, and is merely one of the long list of 
"false apostles/' 

Sandford and His Saints of Shiloh. 

Frank W. Sandford is well educated, and as a recent out 
a minister had two pastorates, one in Maine and rea °^ un ' 

r bridled fa- 

one in New Hampshire. While in the latter he natidsm. 
became a seeker for sanctification, and believed 
that he attained it. He traveled around the 
world, and, concluding that heathen are increas- 
ing in number faster than Christians, conceived 
the notion that he was commissioned by God to 
effect great changes in the Christian world, 
Having returned to this country, he went to his 



144 The Fundamentals 

native town, where he has built upon a sandy 
hill an immense edifice. There he erected a 
'Tower of Prayer." Eight years ago a disciple 
was stationed in the tower, under instruction to 
set his face toward Jerusalem and pray two 
hours. From then until now the disciples have 
succeeded one another in the "Tower of Prayer," 
being relieved every two hours, day and night. 
According to an article of great interest and 
value in Leslie's Monthly, by Mr. H. F. Day, of 
Lewiston, Maine, there has been but one lapse 
among those who prayed in the tower, and this 
was caused by a weary woman being overcome 
by sleep. According to the same authority, who 
knows all the facts, Sandford declares that "God 
talks directly to him." One day he stopped in 
a speech to the saints and said, "God has just 
told me to start for Jerusalem. I shall go to- 
night." He started with a disciple, the two 
having only $11.14. Three months later he re- 
turned, and stated that he had never lacked for 
money; while he was absent contributions came 
in for the buildings and the needs of the saints. 
During his travels he induced many to help 
him; a house worth fifteen thousand dollars was 
given to him in England. (England is a par- 



And Their Contrasts. 145 

adise for magnetic fanatics, and has been for 
ages.) 

The peculiarities of Sandford and his devotees strange an- 
may be summarized as follows : They fall into ttcs 
religious ecstasy, a sort of catalepsy, in which 
they become unconscious and often rigid. Wom- 
en and children sometimes fast seventy-five con- 
secutive hours. When funds are exhausted or 
any kind of trouble comes, they think that "the 
devil has appeared in person." To meet such 
cases they repair to the "Tower of David," 
w r hich is the "Armory." From the walls they 
take bucklers, shields, and weapons, and "sally 
forth, Bible in hand, to drive the devil off the 
hill." After a while they feel that he has gone, 
although they do not profess to see him depart. 
They do profess to cast out demons. Mr. Day 
testifies that he has seen disciples writhing as 
if in epileptic fits. Sandford says that he has 
known "as many as half a dozen demons to in- 
habit one person." The members of the frater- 
nity allege that they raised from the dead a 
woman named Olive Mills. She affirms that she 
was thus raised, and describes what she saw of 
heaven. 

The saints spend the greater part of their time 
10 



146 The Fundamentals 

How" the reading and studying the Bible, and have no 
other text-book. Sandford or one of his elders 
harangues in the temple continuously. On every 
Thursday the community fasts the whole day. 
As all the disciples work in domestic matters, 
there is not much labor for any one. Sandford 
calls the system "cooperation," but he is the 
sole authority, makes laws, makes plans, and 
disposes of the funds ; he selected wives for 
some of his elders, and they were compelled to 
take them. Notwithstanding his professions of 
"divine leading," he is spectacular, and apparent- 
ly is not above the practice of humbug. In the 
autumn a boiler was needed to heat the temple. 
Maine is a cold state, and the temple on a high 
hill. Mr. Sandford gathered the saints before 
the altar, where they prayed six hours. At the 
end of that time "the boiler was seen coming up 
the hill, drawn by twelve oxen." 

Prolific in That he is mentally unstrung, though not irre- 

sponsibly so, appears from the following facts: 
After a second journey to the Holy Land he 
announced that he had new light on baptism, 
and though all the people had been baptized once, 
he made them follow him to the river and be 
immersed again. He has been tried in the civil 



And Their Contrasts. 147 

courts for cruelty to children and for man- 
slaughter. The first charge was that he com- 
pelled his own son, a boy about seven years old, 
to fast seventy hours ! He was found guilty. 
A second charge was that owing to a similar 
enforced fast another child died, and this was 
the basis of the charge of manslaughter. It be- 
ing claimed that the people of that section were 
so prejudiced that he could not have a fair trial, 
he was tried elsewhere. On the trial of the 
second case the jury disagreed. Eight were for 
conviction and three held out for acquittal, while 
the twelfth was ready to agree with either party 
if necessary to a verdict. He was then tried in 
Franklin county and convicted. The case was 
taken to the Supreme Court on exceptions. 
Twelve of the Maine boards of trade and forty 
townships have petitioned the legislature to in- 
vestigate the affairs of Shiloh. Sandford de- 
clares that God has promised to give him an 
ocean liner to help him establish "Holy Ghost 
and Us" stations around the world. 

The Rev. N. H. Harriman, a Baptist clergy- Testimony of 
man, an alumnus of Harvard University and of an scaped 
Bangor Theological Seminary, an earnest Chris- 
tian, heard of Sandfordism when he was residing 



148 The Fundamentals 

in Tacoma, Wash. Believing it to be an "ideal 
Christianity," he went to Shiloh with his family. 
In September, 1903, he published his first article, 
informing the public of what takes place at Shi- 
loh under the claim of the highest Christianity. 
In that and other publications he furnishes abun- 
dant evidence that Sandford is either insane or 
extremely wicked, capable of fiendish cruelty to 
those who doubt his unreasonable claims, pro- 
test against his inconsistent actions, or refuse to 
obey his tyrannical and inhuman commands. 

After much correspondence and a careful 
weighing of the facts, I have been forced to 
the conclusion that he is not irresponsible, and 
should be punished for his crimes, and that state 
supervision should intervene to protect minors 
and persons plainly dominated by unlawful meth- 
ods. 

Christian Science. 

Mrs, Eddy's This collection of contradictory ideas and 
ongm an e q U i voca i an d ambiguous phrases should be 

early life, A ° 

known as "Eddyism," but has been shrewdly 
dignified by the incongruous and misleading title 
of "Christian Science. " The organization was 
undoubtedly founded by Mrs. Mary Baker G. 
Eddy, who at the time of the copyrighting of 



And Their Contrasts. 149 

the book "Science and Health/' in the year 
1875, did so under the name of Mary Baker 
Glover, and in copyrighting it again in 1885, 
having in the meantime married Mr. Eddy, did 
so under the name of Mary Baker G. Eddy. 
She is a native of New Hampshire, and is now 
about eighty-three years of age. Her parents 
were respectable, and she had opportunities for 
a fair education, which in general were then not 
the best for women ; but her brother had a good 
education, and she respresents that he taught her 
much. 

In her early life she was an invalid, and it is 
stated on good authority that she was hysterical, 
and she claims to have been subject to certain 
chronic maladies. Modern spiritualism arose in 
this country in 1847, an d she coquetted with it, 
but claims not to have believed it. Magnetic 
healers were numerous, and she resorted to them 
for relief. She also studied a little of the ho- 
meopathic school of medicine, and about the 
year 1862 went to Portland, Maine, and took 
treatment of a certain Mr. (known as Dr.) P. 
P. Quimby, who was a mesmerist and healer. 
This was an epoch in her life, for Quimby im- 
pressed his views upon her very strongly. She 



150 The Fundamentals 

alleges that for three years she retired from the 
world and communed with God, and that he re- 
vealed to her the system of faith and practice 
now termed by her "Christian Science/' 

This, however, is not the whole case. Wheth- 
er she communed with God at all is doubtful; 
whether she thought she did is uncertain ; wheth- 
er she did or not, it is certain that she did not 
find her system in the Bible or receive it by 
revelation- of God, for the essence of it she de- 
An omitted rived from Dr. Quimby. For three years after 
portion of those in which she claimed to receive Christian 
Science from God, she lived in Stoughton, Mass., 
and there she taught Mrs. Sally Wentworth, with 
whom she resided, the root ideas that she sub- 
sequently put forth, and allowed Mrs. Wentworth 
to copy a document which Quimby had given 
her, and this copy Mrs. Eddy corrected in her 
own handwriting in two or three places. She 
also told the whole family that Dr. Quimby was 
a great man, and that she got her ideas from him. 
The Wentworth family are reputable citizens, 
more than ordinarily intelligent. After reveal- 
ing all these facts, which were known to many 
persons in private, Mr. Horace T. Wentworth 
published an article in the Boston Transcript, 



Mrs. Eddy*s 
"Life" 



And Their Contrasts. 15 1 

stating the facts. This article I saw, and, ac- 
companied by the Rev. Dr. Chaffin, for the last 
thirty years pastor of the Unitarian Church 
at Easton, Mass., a few miles from Stoughton, 
called on the family, whom he knew, examined 
the documents, and had extended conversations 
with one of the family who during that period 
was an amanuensis for Mrs. Eddy, and with the 
youngest daughter of Mrs. Wentworth, who was 
almost Mrs. Eddy's constant companion. Sub- 
sequently the documents possessed by the Went- 
worths and the history of Mrs. Eddy's stay in 
Stoughton were published by the New York 
Times. 

In course of time Mrs. Eddy went to Boston Mrs. Eddy 
and set up a college of metaphysical healing. „ * » • 
When she called her system Christian Science Boston. 
it at once elicited some attention; it attracted 
among others Joseph Cook, then a widely known 
lecturer and defender of orthodox Christianity, 
and Dr. A. J. Gordon, a noted Baptist minister 
and pastor of Tremont Temple, Boston. 

By her conversation she beguiled these gentle- 
men into believing that she was a Christian with 
unusual faith, a sort of Madame Guyon; but 
they soon discovered that her views on almost 



for tnystifi' 
cation. 



152 The Fundamentals 

every subject were entirely at variance with the 
teachings of Christ and his apostles, and were 
therefore compelled to come out over their own 
signatures, repudiating her notions and her 
"Christian Science," declaring that they had 
found her system neither the one nor the other. 
Her genius She has displayed great power of mystifica- 

tion, marvelous ability in leading people to be- 
lieve that she has something deep to be made 
known to. the initiated, and equally marvelous 
financial skill. She produced that collection of 
disconnected thoughts, doubtful theories, ques- 
tionable facts, and sibylline articles known as 
"Science and Health," and copyrighted it. She 
founded a "church," required every member to 
buy a copy of "Science and Health," and for- 
bade each and every member or reader to ex- 
pound or comment upon it. She forbids preach- 
ing, and compiles all the readings for her 
"church," which are from the Bible and "Science 
and Health." Should there be a second service 
on any Sunday, it must be an exact repetition 
of the first. 

It will be seen from the following quotations 
from "Science and Health" that Mrs. Eddy's dis- 
tinctive views are that God is not a person, matter 



And Their Contrasts. 153 

not a reality, but "a delusion of mortal mind/' 
and that mortal mind causes "the delusion that 
man is sick, or maimed, or hunrgy, or faint." 
Sin also is a delusion of mortal mind. Prayer 
to God to do anything in answer thereto is not 
permissible, and neither medicine nor hygiene are 
necessary or of service in either preventing or 
removing disease. Unless it is believed to be so, 
neither fasting nor much eating is beneficial or 
injurious to health. 

"God is supreme ; is mind ; is principle, not Mrs. Eddys 
person." half truths 

concerning 

"Infinite impersonal Mind is the Creator/' God. 

"God is Mind. He is Divine Principle, not 
person." 

"Immortal Mind is the only Cause and imper- 
sonal Principle." 

"Cause does not exist in matter, in mortal 
mind, or in personality." 

''Prayer to a personal God affects the sick Mrs - Edd y %s 
like a drug that has no efficacy of its own, but t J" a „ 
borrows its power from human faith and belief. 
The drug does nothing because it has no in- 
telligence. It is faith, not Divine Principle, that 
causes a drug to — apparently — heal the sick." 

"If we pray to God as a person, this will pre- 



154 The Fundamentals 

vent us from letting go the human doubts and 
fears that attend all personality/' 

To fasten her unchristian notions upon the 
words of Jesus she thus twists the Lord's 
Prayer : 

"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 
Thy supremacy appears as matter disap- 
pears. 
Give us this day our daily bread ; 

Thou .give st to mortals the Bread of Life; 
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our 
debtors. 
Thy truth destroyeth the claims of error. 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us 
from evil ; 
And, led by the Spirit, mortals are deliv- 
ered from sickness and death." 
Her view of "Mind is all and Matter naught. . . . Matter 

matter and seemeth tQ be> but fc nQt » 
the human 

jj 0d y t "Erring mortal views misnamed Mind pro- 

duce all the organic and animal action of the 
mortal body." 

"Divine science shows that matter and mortal 
body are the illusions of human belief which 
seems to appear and disappear to mortal sense 
alone." 



And Their Contrasts. 15S 

"Electricity is not a vital fluid, but an element Her theory of 
of mortal mind, — the thought essence that forms 
the link between what is termed matter and mor- 
tal mind. Both are different strata of human be- 
lief. The grosser stratum is named matter. The 
more ethereal is called human mind, which is 
the nearer counterfeit of the immortal Mind, 
and hence the more accountable and sinful be- 
lief." 

"The act of describing disease — its symptoms, Her theory of 
locality, and fatality — itself makes the disease. " ^sease t 

foiso?i i and 

"I have discerned disease in the human mind, wounds. 
and recognized the patient's fear of it, many 
weeks before the so-called disease made its ap- 
pearance in the body. Disease being a belief, — 
a latent creation of mind, before it appears as 
matter, — I am never mistaken in my diagnosis of 
disease." 

"Human mortality proves that error has been 
ingrafted into both the dreams and conclusions 
of material and mortal humanity." 

"You say that indigestion, fatigue, sleepless- 
ness cause distressed stomachs and aching heads. 
Then you consult your brains, in order to re- 
member what has hurt you, when your remedy 
lies in forgetting the whole thing ; for matter has 



156 The Fundamentals 

no sensations and the human mind is all that 
can produce pain." 

"You say a boil is painful; but that is impos- 
sible, for matter without mind is not painful. 
The boil simply manifests your belief in pain, — 
inflammation and swelling; and you call this be- 
lief a boil !" 

"If a dose of poison is swallowed through mis- 
take, the patient dies while physician and patient 
are expecting favorable results. Did belief 
cause this death? Even so, and as directly as 
if the poison had been intentionally taken. . . . 
The few who think a drug harmless where a mis- 
take has been made in the prescription are un- 
equal to the many who have called it poison, and 
so the majority of opinion governs the result !" 

"The fear of dissevered bodily members, or a 
belief in such a possibility, is reflected on the 
body, in the shape of headache, fractured bones, 
dislocated joints, and so on, as directly as shame 
is seen in the blush rising to the cheek. This 
human error about physical wounds and colics is 
part and parcel of the delusion that matter can 
feel and see, having sensation and substance." 

"Every sort of sickness is a degree of insanity ; 
that is, sickness is always hallucination. This 



And Their Contrasts. 157 

view is not altered by the fact that it is not m™. Eddys 
acknowledged or discovered by everybody/' . eory . of 

"Thera. is a universal insanity, that mistakes 
fable for fact throughout the entire round of the 
material senses; but this general craze cannot 
shield the individual case from the special name 
of insanity. Those unfortnuate people who are 
committed to insane asylums are but well-defined 
instances of the baneful effects of illusion on mor- 
tal minds and bodies." 

"A bunion would produce insanity as percep- 
tible as that produced by congestion of the brain, 
were it not that mortal mind calls the bunion 
an unconscious portion of the body. Reverse 
this belief, and the results would be different/' 

"Ossification, or any unusual condition of the 
bones, is as strictly the action of mortal mind as 
insanity. Bones have only the substance of 
thought; they are only an appearance to mortal 
mind." 

"This woman learned that food neither Mrs, Eddy's 
strengthens nor weakens the body, — that mind theory °f 

food, exer- 

alone does this. True mortal mind has its mate- aset and 
rial methods of doing it; one of which is to say baths * 
that proper food supplies nutriment and strength 
to the human system. She learned also that 



158 The Fundamentals 

mortal mind makes a mortal and sickly body, 
because it governs it with mortal opinions. " 

"Because the muscles of the blacksm^h's arm 
are strongly developed, it does not follow that 
exercise did it, or that an arm less used must be 
fragile. If matter were the cause of action, and 
muscles, without the cooperation of mortal mind, 
could lift the hammer and smite the nail, it might 
be thought true that hammering enlarges the 
muscles. But the trip hammer is not increased 
in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles are 
as material as wood and iron? Because mortal 
mind is not producing that result in the ham- 
mer." 

Nor is rest after exercise or hard work of any 
benefit. She affirms the inefficiency of hygiene, 
and proceeds : "You would not say that a wheel 
is fatigued ; and yet the body is just as material 
as the wheel. Setting aside what the human 
mind says of the body, it would never be weary 
any more than the inanimate wheel. Under- 
standing this great fact rests you more than 
hours of repose." 

Bathing and massage for health purposes only 
perpetuate a delusion, for Mrs. Eddy says, "Bath- 
ing and rubbing to alter the secretions or remove 



mind. 



And Their Contrasts. i$9 

unhealthy exhalations from the cuticle receive a 
useful rebuke from Christian healing." 

The first and general prescription is, "Besiege How to re- 
sickness and death with these principles and all 

delusions of 

will disappear" She must, however, have be- mortal 
come somewhat skeptical quite early, for in an- 
swering a critic she said : "I have never supposed 
that this century (the nineteenth) would present 
the full fruits of Christian Science, or that sin, 
sickness, and death would not continue for cen- 
turies to come ; but this I do aver, that as a result 
of my teaching old age and decrepitude will not 
come as soon." 

A specimen of her own method of "besieging" 
is this : "What if the lungs are ulcerated ? God 
is more to a man than his lungs; and the less 
matter we have, the more immortality we possess. 
. . . If the lungs are disappearing, this is but 
one of the beliefs of mortal mind. Mortal man 
will be less mortal, when he learns that lungs 
never sustained life and can never destroy God 
who is our life." 

She also states that Christian Science finds "the 
decided type of acute disease, however severe, 
quite as ready to yield as the less distinct type 
and chronic form of disease," and "handles the 



i6o 



The Fundamentals 



Science will 
not ac- 
knowledge 
her. 



The Bible 
knows noth- 
ing of her 
notions. 



most malignant contagion with perfect assur- 
ance." To provide for emergencies, she says: 
"If patients seem the worse for reading my book, 
this change may either arise from the frightened 
mind of the physician or mark the crisis of the 
disease. Perseverance in its perusal would heal 
them completely/' 

In the foregoing statements Mrs. Eddy con- 
tradicts natural science, common sense, universal 
experience, and the teachings of the Scriptures. 
She has treated half truths as though they were 
the truth and the whole truth, and has intermin- 
gled with such half truths errors of fact and reli- 
gious and scientific untruths, the whole being 
adapted to infatuate the half educated and some 
of higher attainments who do not understand 
that her "cures" are explicable upon natural prin- 
ciples. 

Mrs. Eddy claims to base her system on the 
Bible. But neither the Old Testament writers 
nor Christ, his apostles nor the evangelists, ever 
spoke of sickness as though they had the least 
knowledge of such notions as those of Mrs. 
Eddy ; but spoke always as they would have done 
had they heard of her theory and knew it to be 
false, 



And Their Contrasts. 161 

In the Old Testament Elisha the prophet is Tke old T ^- 
represented as dying of a lingering disease. The 
words are, "Now Elisha was fallen sick of his 
sickness whereof he died/' Hezekiah the king 
was extremely ill, and, according to the Scrip- 
tures, Isaiah the prophet prayed to God for him, 
and also applied a plaster of figs as a medicine, 
which plaster God blessed. 

In the Second Book of Kings, first chapter 
and second verse, is this statement: "Ahaziah 
fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber, 
and was sick." He sent to "inquire of Baal- 
Zebub the God of Ekron" whether he should 
"recover of this disease." 

The Second Book of Chronicles, sixteenth 
chapter and twelfth verse, has these words : "And 
Asa in the thirty and ninth years of his reign was 
diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceed- 
ing great." The same book states that God sent 
a plague on Jehoram ; this was the proclamation : 
"Thou shalt have greats sickness by disease of 
thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of 
the sickness day by day." Thus "God smote 
him with an incurable disease." 

The effects of improper food in causing sick- 
ness are mentioned in Proverbs. "Hast thou 
ii 



162 The Fundamentals 

found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for 
thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it." 

The benefits of exercise are thus stated: "The 
sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat 
little or much ; but the abundance of the rich will 
not suffer him to sleep/' 

The following passage shows that by the holy 
men who were inspired to write the Sacred Scrip- 
tures the medical value of wine and strong drink, 
in some cases as a stimulant and in others as an 
opiate, was known and acted upon. Proverbs 
xxxi. 6: "Give strong drink unto him that is 
ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of 
heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his 
poverty, and remember his misery no more." 
The New In the New Testament the diseases with 

f ", which those who came for relief to Christ and 

knows noth- 
ing of her his apostles were afflicted are named and de- 

fandes. scribed, and the healings are spoken of as though 
both health and disease are conditions of the 
body, the one as real as the other. 

It was Christ who said, "They that are whole 
need not a physician; but they that are sick." 
To Christ it was said, "Lord, behold, he whom 
thou lovest is sick"; and he replied, "This sick- 
ness is not unto death." The Good Samaritan 



And Their Contrasts. 163 

"bound up the wounds" of the man who had 
fallen among thieves, "pouring in oil and wine" ; 
— those things being chief medicines in use 
among the Jews. 

The account of the sickness and death of Dor- 
cas and all the circumstances show that they had 
no such ideas of disease as are taught by Chris- 
tian Scientists. 

St. Paul speaks of the effects of drunkenness 
and gluttony at the holy communion, where that 
festival had been carried to such an extent that 
he says, "For this cause many are weak and 
sickly among you, and many sleep." 

Paul's sufferings and weakness and painful- 
ness are described, and especially his "thorn in 
the flesh" — and his prayers to God three times 
that it might depart. 

The prescription by Paul to Timothy, that he 
should "drink no longer water, but use a little 
wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often in- 
firmities," is plainly medical. 

Another remark of Paul's shows how little 
sympathy he had with such views as those of 
Mrs. Eddy: "Erastus abode at Corinth; but 
Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick." 

The words of Paul concerning Epaphroditus 



164 The Fundamentals 

are also to the point: "For he longed after you 
all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye 
had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he 
was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy 
on him ; and not on him only, but on me also, lest 
I should have sorrow upon sorrow/' 

Paul evidently knew nothing of Mrs. Eddy's 
half truths, and would have included them with 
the "old wives' fables," against which he warned 
the disciples. 

These are given only as examples. All Christ's 
cures and those of the apostles were instantane- 
ous, or practically so. 

Had not Mrs. Eddy put forth her healing 
system as a religion, it would scarcely have been 
heard of, and she would merely be classed with 
quacks and charlatans; and her religion would 
not have attracted much attention had she not 
put it forth as a healing system. 

That Dowie, Sandford, Simpson, Mrs. Eddy, 
etc. — although they maintain silence about their 
failures, greatly magnify the ailment with which 
their subjects are afflicted, and never refer to 
relapses — can claim recoveries among their ad- 
herents, is undeniable. 

Recoveries from actual illness can be explained 



'recover- 



And Their Contrasts. 165 

without attributing any specific efficacy to the Accounting 
theories they teach. When they pose as author- 
ized Christian teachers, they have the advantage ies. 
of the faith that exists in Christians. When any 
one declares himself to have invented a new 
theory, if it is positively asserted and plausibly 
defended, he has the influence of the strong in- 
stinct of the human mind to hear or see something 
new or mysterious. And when this receives 
some attention, the pretense that it is but a re- 
vival and amplification of pure Christianity will 
silence the scruples of those who hesitated to 
break with the Church. Some of the most suc- 
cessful of religious swindles have been thus 
propagated. 

All forms of alleged healing without medicine 
or attention to hygiene derive some advantages 
from the fact not known, forgotten, or insuffi- 
ciently estimated, that many diseases are self- 
limited. In such cases if the patient possesses 
staying power until the disease has run its course, 
he will recover under almost any treatment, or 
none. Pneumonia and typhoid fever are in the 
class of self-limited diseases. All forms of 
quackery, physical or mental, have the benefit 
of the vital force of the patient, which is the 



166 The Fundamentals 

real curing power. Some persons have al- 
ready taken altogether too much medicine, and 
often medicine not adapted to their situation. 
When these, if not already doomed, comply with 
the order of the mind-curer, the faith-curer, or 
the Eddyite, to cease the use of medicine, by so 
doing they give the vis medicatrix naturce an 
opportunity to save them from further physical 
deterioration. 

Without- doubt many think themselves ill when 
they are not so. These respond to the sugges- 
tions of mental healers; the hysterical can often 
be thus healed. Many need only encouragement 
to shake off the sub-invalidism, which without 
such stimulus would continue indefinitely. Thus 
it is apparent that any system of healing may 
show a large percentage of recoveries. 

The power of the mind over the body is great, 
and therein lies the power of suggestions. Peo- 
ple can think themselves into illness, and others 
can be talked into a serious sickness. In like 
manner they can be benefited by words and by 
their own thoughts. 
Their com- B u t to all these there is a limit. Dowie and 
the other anti-medicine healers in the name of 
Christianity, and Mrs. Eddy, exhibit no suprem- 



mon limits. 



And Their Contrasts. i6*j 

acy over pagans, spiritualists, magnetizers, Mor- 
mons, or mind-curers ; and they have the same 
limitations as to the diseases they cannot heal, 
and injuries they cannot repair. They cannot 
perform the mighty works attributed to Christ 
and his apostles. He cured the epileptic and the 
lunatic, the blind received sight, the lame walked, 
the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, and the 
dead were raised up. The "withered hand" was 
restored, not by the slow process of a change in 
the circulation, and gradual change in nutrition 
followed by structural alteration, but was instant- 
ly made "whole like the other." He made the 
"maimed whole," and when one of his disciples 
struck off the "right ear" of a servant of the 
high priest, Christ "touched his ear and healed 
him." Mrs. Eddy and Dowie are but "nature's 
journeymen" dishonoring Christ's name by their 
claims. 

Mrs. Eddy organized her believers with Time came 
adults mostlv young or in middle life, and there J or f ul1 

average of 

were for some years very few deaths ; but Chris- deaths. 
tian Scientists have lost by death fully the aver- 
age number. Such is the case when clubs are 
formed or mutual insurance companies in which 
each member pays a fixed sum when a death oc- 



1 68 The Fundamentals 

curs. For some years deaths are few and there 
is little for each survivor to pay; but later, as 
deaths increase and survivors decrease, the pay- 
ments sometimes bankrupt the organization. 

Christian Scientists are found as patients in all 
the large hospitals. A number of healers and 
readers have died, some in horrible agony, from 
diseases which might have been checked had they 
been properly treated ; and the press with increas- 
ing frequency chronicles the deaths of Christian 
Scientists. 
The logic of By the course of events Mrs. Eddy has already 
V* c . e been compelled to make such concessions that all 

Jorctng con- r 

cessions. except the self -hood winked must recognize a 
growing lack of confidence on her part and the 
public in her theories. These concessions are: 
That surgical cases at her behest are left to reg- 
ular surgeons, allowing them to decide whether 
anaesthetics, stimulants, or astringents are neces- 
sary. Obstetrical cases are also left to thorough- 
ly educated physicians. 

Healers no longer have her approbation in at- 
tempting to treat contagious diseases. They did 
attempt this with "complete assurance," but dis- 
aster overtook them so often as to arouse public 
indignation. They are now instructed to have 



And Their Contrasts. 169 

in readiness a regular physician to certify of 
what disease those die with whom their theory 
and practice have been unsuccessful. And when 
(after a reasonable time) the patient seems to 
be growing worse, and the Scientist seems unable 
to dispel the "error of mortal mind/' Mrs. Eddy 
advises that the healer inform the patient or his 
family of the fact, and if he or they so choose 
a physician may be called. 

It is always wise and right for Christians to The true doc- 
pray for those whom they conscientiously desire p™ er for 
to recover. God can answer such prayers in the sick, 
various ways without a miracle. He has con- 
stant access to the minds of the patients, relatives, 
physicians, and nurses. Some physicians by 
tone, manner, and words can encourage a patient 
to such a degree that the circulation of his blood, 
his digestion, and his respiration are favorably 
affected, and this may change sinking into re- 
viving. 

But if man can do this, what may not the ever- 
present Spirit of God accomplish ? Also God, with- 
out a miracle, by influencing the thoughts of all 
interested, may cause suggestions to arise from 
which may come healing treatment which might 
not have been thought of otherwise. That He 



170 The Fundamentals 

in whom we live, and move, and have our being 
can, without infracting the superficial order of 
the universe, directly restore a sick person, — the 
result appearing to have come through natural 
causes, — is a proposition that no one can dis- 
prove, although from the nature of the case no 
one can demonstrate it. 

Christian faith is simple and consistent. Each 
true believer may say, "God is a loving Father. 
He knows my deepest need. I strive to obey his 
laws in nature and in grace. I pray to him, in love 
and trust, that he will give me that for which I 
pray, or strength to bear the deprivation of that 
which I wished and prayed for, but now see was 
not needful or best for me." 

The object of presenting this record of super- 
stition, fanaticism, and imposture is to emphasize 
the predictions of Christ and his apostles. No 
class of false "prophets/' "apostles," "Christs" 
escaped their prevision. 

New distortions and false forms of Christian- 
ity will arise where Christianity is formal or cor- 
rupt. They will appear wherever prayers for the 
sick show that pastors have no faith that God 
will restore in answer to prayer, and when the 
preacher has naught to offer in consolation but 



And Their Contrasts. 171 

stoical maxims and poetical sentiments. When 
one generation loses faith in true religion, the 
next will be ready for extravagant conceptions 
of the supernatural. No one, therefore, should 
be alarmed when a spurious religion arises. 

Indeed, one of the strongest proofs of the di- 
vine origin of Christianity is that — although im- 
peded and scandalized by such impostures and 
fanaticisms, which take the name of Christianity 
— it has maintained itself through the ages, and 
still with vigor presses toward its ideal; and, as 
true believers hold, toward its destined goal — the 
spiritual conquest of the world. 



VI. 

THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 



VI. 

THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 

There are convincing reasons for believing 
that Christianity will never perish from the earth, 
but that it will spread throughout the world, 
superseding most other religions ; and, in those 
which maintain their ancient names, in vital 
points it will cause an assimilation to itself. 

The structure of Christianity rests upon the -Basts oj 
religious nature of man, that instinct of faith, 
aspiration, and hope which springs eternal in 
the human breast, the foundation on which all 
religions rest. The sense of freedom of choice 
is the measure of the feeling of responsibility, 
and the consciousness thereof is the basis of 
conscience. Each human being feels that he is 
free to choose. He is not less sure that he is 
free than that he is alive, or that he is afraid, 
an g r y> joyful, hopeful, or intends to speak the 
truth. When -men intentionally perform an act, 
or determine to perform one, they are conscious 
of power to decide otherwise. 

(175) 



176 The Fundamentals 

All recognize the difference between the sane 
and the insane. They treat the sane as free, and 
praise or blame, respect or despise, punish or 
reward, accordingly. The relation of husband 
and wife is based upon the self-knowledge of 
freedom, and the recognition of it by each in 
the other: likewise those between employer and 
employee, ruler and subject. Every man who 
professes to believe in necessity and irrespon- 
sibility is obliged to talk inconsistently. There 
is no language formed for any but those who 
believe themselves free; and it is because the 
consciousness of freedom is imbedded in every 
human breast that "conscience doth make cow- 
ards of us all." 

The religious nature of man, at its best, yearns 
for the recognition of God and for a sense of 
recognition by him; longs for the privilege and 
power of communing w T ith him ; for knowledge 
and guidance; for strength and consolation; for 
relief from the sense of sin and deliverance from 
the fear of death. In order to determine whether 
an alleged revelation is genuine, it is essential to 
keep in view wherein consists the need of a 
revelation from God. All who recognize the 



a true reve- 
lation. 



And Their Contrasts. i77 

need will agree that it must meet the following 
conditions : 

Its source must be supernatural. Conditions of 

It must be true to the permanent and universal 
religious needs of human nature. 

It must account for apparent contradictions in 
its declared principles, and afford an adequate 
support under the operation of those contradic- 
tions. 

It must render unhappy, men without virtue, 
and sustain them in efforts to secure or re- 
gain it. 

It must impart to each believer internal evi- 
dence of everlasting conscious existence and hap- 
piness, and the elements of that happiness must 
be seen to be in harmony with the spirit and 
principles of the revelation. 

It must be adapted to human nature in all 
kindreds, tribes, and tongues. 

It must raise up successive generations of wit- 
nesses to its truth who shall be propagandists of 
the faith. 

Upon the assumption, therefore, that man must 
and will have religion, the God of Christianity, 
once enthroned in the human race, will remain. 

His spirituality overthrows materialism. To 

12 



178 The Fundamentals 

The spintu. define spirit may defy human ingenuity, but is 

ality of the 

God of not more difficult than to define matter ; and 
christian- there is as much evidence of the existence of 

ity. 

something which is not matter as there is of some- 
thing not spirit. They are to be classified among 
things which are understood, but can neither be 
defined nor described in human language. "God 
is a Spirit ; and they that worship him must wor- 
ship him in spirit and in truth. " 
The nmty oj jj- g tf^fcy antagonizes and expels polytheism. 

God. 

His invisibility shatters every idol and overthrows 
every altar. His providence places prayer on a 
rational basis, and gives each servant of God evi- 
dence of a sure support. 

It might be possible at the present time for 
one to accept atheism if compelled to choose 
between that and polytheism; but against the 
unity, omnipotence, omniscience, invisibility, and 
eternity of the one God, few but distorted minds 
or depraved hearts could permanently react. 

The personality of God speaks in every page 
of the New Testament, and he whose soul is 
saturated with its truths has no more doubt of 
God's personality than he has that he and his 
fellow-men are persons. 

The religious nature of man finds its best and 



And Their Contrasts. 179 

only true affinity with one God of heaven and 
earth, revealed in the Christian Scriptures. 

The law of God as revealed in Christianity is The law oj 
the righteous expression of his will, obedience to 
which is necessary to the welfare of man. Its 
foundation principles are, "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all 
thy mind. ,, This is the only true key to the 
problem of an intelligent and free creature's rela- 
tion to his Creator. Surely the Creator owns 
the creature, and the latter owes existence and 
all possessions primarily to the Creator. God is 
love, and therefore supremely lovable. The 
creature, realizing this, should cleave unto him, 
not alone under the pressure of duty, but in re- 
sponse to the promptings of gratitude and the 
attraction of pure love. This makes the whole 
individual life the outgrowth of a principle in- 
grained in the heart and conscience. 

The creature must look to the Creator for 
light as to his duty toward his fellows, and he 
has graciously condensed them into one all-inclu- 
sive command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." "Love worketh no ill," but all good. 
Hence onlv beneficent actions and institutions 



i8o 



The Fundamentals 



The corner 
stone of 
Christian- 
ity, 



can flow from it. With these principles all the 
specific precepts and commands of the Christian 
religion are in harmony; and as men can per- 
ceive that the welfare of mankind depends upon 
the prevalence of these principles and obedience 
to them, they will not be forgotten nor be without 
examples and witnesses. 

The world will never relinquish the "golden 
rule," which cannot be preserved unless men are 
pervaded by the spirit of love to God the Father 
of all. Universal experience has shown the truth 
of the affirmation that "man will never say, 'Our 
brothers on earth/ unless he first says from his 
heart, 'Our Father who art in heaven/ ' 

The incarnation and atonement of the Son 
of God form the corner stone of the Christian 
structure. Without this manifestation of him- 
self, the Christian system would contain nothing 
which could impress and save the world. Of 
God's feelings toward his earthly creatures they 
could have no certain demonstration, and, de- 
pressed by conscious imperfection and laden with 
sins, they would sink into the slough of despond, 
and the light of hope would disappear from their 
souls. But with that amazing act of condescen- 
sion in view, the guilty may hope, the fainting 



And Their Contrasts. 181 

expect strength, and the righteous pursue their 
"high calling of God in Christ Jesus" with ever- 
increasing confidence. 

The necessity and efficacy of the incarnation 
and atonement of the Son of God are seen in 
every heathen sacrifice, which is an attempt of 
the religious instinct to obliterate the pain of 
conscious guilt and to placate a righteously indig- 
nant God. 

Every pleading, despairing cry of a genuine 
penitent is a testimony to his need of a Divine 
Saviour. And the peace wrought by the Holy 
Spirit, together with the reforming power of faith 
in the "only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth/' "once offered for all," furnishes an 
internal demonstration to those who possess it; 
and — so long as they retain it — their lives are a 
constant witness to the source of their inspira- 
tion. 

The regenerating power of the Holy Spirit in God's mani- 
the world demonstrates the truth of the Bible, f estation ** 

the soul. 

to the souls of those who are regenerate, so 
clearly as to render the Christian comparatively 
independent of human aids to faith. Christians 
are not taught to undervalue learning, nor — 
though warned against undue love of them — to 



1 82 The Fundamentals 

despise earthly possessions ; for these are capable 
of being accessory to the spread of the gospel ; 
but the mightiest effects of Christianity have 
often been wrought without learning, wealth, or 
culture. Men who knew but one thing, whose 
only testimony was that of the "blind man," 
"Whether he [Christ] be a sinner or no, I know 
not ; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, 
now I see," have sometimes exerted an irresist- 
ible moral and mental influence over even the 
learned; and philosophers who have listened un- 
moved to the keenest logic, to glowing rhetoric 
or profound disquisitions, have been persuaded 
to yield their hearts, by humble men and un- 
affected women who testified in meekness and "in 
much trembling" to what God by his Spirit had 
wrought in and for them. The influence also of 
the Holy Ghost, once experienced, in aiding men 
to reach the highest conception of virtue pos- 
sible to finite natures, to resist temptation and 
endure persecution, has the moral force of a 
miracle. So that those who preach the gospel 
proclaim not only a system of pure truth and 
the conditions of peace and pardon from God, 
but a spiritual power of which every man may be 
conscious, the fruits of which he may see in his 



And Their Contrasts. 183 

own life, and to which he can testify fearlessly 
whenever asked "a reason of the hope that is 
in him." 

The privilege of prayer, and its supports in The christian 
Christianity, are presented as in no other religion. C ^l ra *° e * 
God is revealed as a loving Father; and when 
the heart, conscious of imperfection, mourns un- 
der the recollection of sins of neglect and of di- 
rect wickedness; when darkness and gloom ex- 
clude the light of hope, the exceeding great and 
precious promises appear on every page of the 
Sacred Writings, adapted to every possible sit- 
uation, thus preventing the total loss of hope. 
The sane man who prays never commits suicide, 
never flees from a recognized responsibility, nev- 
er resorts to desperate measures of an unholy na- 
ture to right his wrongs or to revenge them. 
When all else fails, prayer remains, an antidote 
to despair. 

The world will never cast away the hope of The hofe of 
conscious and blissful immortality which Chris- 
tianity offers. A scientific study of human na- 
ture does not afford a satisfactory answer to 
the question, "What fate awaits us when we die ?" 
The physical universe makes no response. The 
stars are cold ; the sun itself decays. The world 



184 The Fundamentals 

listens for voices from the unfathomable depths, 
and, as it listens, becomes conscious of a silence 
that chills the soul. But the note of Christianity 
is jubilant: "Whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die" ; and "though he were dead, 
yet shall he live." "I heard a voice from heaven 
saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead 
which die in the Lord from henceforth; Yea, 
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their 
labors ; and their works do follow them." 

The world will never turn permanently away 
from a religion that declares, "It is sown in cor- 
ruption, it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown 
in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in 
weakness, it is raised in power ; it is sown a nat- 
ural body, it is raised a spiritual body." 

The most noteworthy fact relating to Chris- 
tianity and immortality is not the confident and 
jubilant tone in which Christ and the apostles 
speak of personal immortality (though that tone 
is found nowhere else), but the testimony to its 
certainly by communion with God. The logic is 
simple, but strong. God who speaks in the soul 
would not inspire such confidence and joy to 
deceive; — nor is this all: a sense of permanence 
pervades the mind, and the perpetual flow of feel- 



And Their Contrasts. 185 

ing allows no note of earthly mutations or con- 
tingencies. It is not that the Christian reasons 
that he will live forever. He does indeed so 
reason, but in addition he feels it. 

Not only is the promise of eternal life an ele- The fate of 

. . r ,-« '^. • ' . 1 . the unright- 

ment in the perpetuity of Christianity, but its 
warnings, especially those which reveal the fact 
of retribution after death, are equally essential in 
maintaining a sense of its truth. Those who re- 
gard its teachings upon the subject of punish- 
ment an impediment to its progress misunder- 
stand human nature and misread or misinterpret 
the teachings of the New Testament and the his- 
tory of the origin and growth of Christianity. 
Those who believe in a just God cannot admit the 
possibility of a situation in which sin and holi- 
ness will receive similar treatment at his hands. 
Christianity is as clear in its declarations in re- 
gard to punishment as it is in respect to reward; 
yet in various periods this principle and all the 
truths related to it have been misrepresented. 

It was long taught that the Father of all is Misrepresent* 
not equally solicitous that all shall be saved. It ckr^sX 
has been held by a few that infants and pagans teachings 
will be accounted sinners, and as such suffer eter- concern »& 

the doom of 

nal punishment. But these views are now sel- the -wicked. 



186 The Fundamentals 

dom avowed ; they are considered unchristian lim- 
itations of God's love. 

For some decades in the last century it was 
strenuously taught that all mankind, whatever 
their lives on earth mav have been, will be saved 
and enter upon the heavenly state at death. 
Those who believe in universal salvation, but 
are unwilling to accept the foregoing view, have 
maintained that the future state is a mixed one, 
where the unrighteous will have opportunities 
for reformation superior to those afforded in 
this life ; and that one by one they will improve 
those opportunities till all shall be made holy. 
None of these views are found in the New Testa- 
ment, nor can they be harmonized with the words 
or spirit of Christ. 

Of infants Christ said, "Of such is the kingdom 
of heaven" ; of those who have not the law St. 
Peter by inspiration said, "Of a truth I perceive 
that God is no respecter of persons ; but in every 
nation he that feareth him, and worketh right- 
eousness, is accepted with him." Hence every 
responsible being, Jew or Gentile, pagan or Chris- 
tian, who truly repents of his sins and walks in 
the light which he has received, whether greater 
or less, will be saved. 



And Their Contrasts. 187 

"No man can number" the finally saved; for, vast number 
including all sinless infants that have died; all 
children who have died before they were suffi- 
ciently developed in intellect and will to make so 
momentous a decision ; all men of every race and 
religion who have walked as nearly in harmony 
with the light they have as Christians are re- 
quired to walk ; and all the fully enlightened and 
faithful servants of the ever-living God, of every 
name, they must comprise the vast majority of 
the human race. 

Thus a religion which begins by convincing 
men of guilt and preaching remission of sin to 
the repentant ; and in connection therewith prom- 
ises to those who keep the faith the blessing of 
God while they live, and after death life ever- 
lasting — at the same time warning men of dan- 
ger — meets all the spiritual wants of the normal 
mind. From such a religion, wherein duty, hope, 
fear, and love unite, mankind can never wholly 
turn away. In certain periods fear has had dis- 
proportionate dominance ; in the present era hope 
may be unduly exalted; but wherever the warn- 
ings have been no longer heard, or are feebly 
uttered, the influence of Christianity has waned. 
That a dark shadow is thrown by Christianity 



188 The Fundamentals 

over the destiny of a portion of the human race 
has been the opinion of a vast majority of Chris- 
tians, nor does it seem possible to remove it ex- 
cept by methods which would destroy the cred- 
ibility of the revelation if applied to other parts 
thereof. Christ's teachings of the dark side do 
not obscure the dominant note of good will to 
men. The charge that it is ignoble to serve God 
from fear or from hope is lightly made. The 
function- of fear is to arouse a sleeping con- 
science ; of hope to inspire an elevated ambition ; 
and both take a minor place in human thought 
and feeling when the heart is filled with love to 
God and the spirit and life are controlled by a 
high sense of duty. Even to such exalted spir- 
its, so long as the flesh infolds them the warn- 
ings of the gospel no less than its promises may 
instantly become vitally important. "Let him 
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall," 
and let every one "work out his salvation with fear 
and trembling." It is this necessity, demonstrated 
by the long line of generations, which justifies the 
initial declaration that Christianity as a religion 
among men depends largely upon its denuncia- 
tions of sin and its warnings to all men to repent 
of their sins and thus escape the judgment of God. 



And Their Contrasts. 189 

It is pertinent to the subject to trace the fibers Christianity 
which incorporate Christianity with the forces ™»*»/ 
that rule the world. That it is the religion of things of 
Great Britain and Ireland, France, Holland, Bel- 
gium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Ger- 
many, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the United 
States, Canada, Mexico, and the South American 
states, is sufficient to show that it is incorporated 
with the powers that rule the world. No doubt 
in some of the countries named it exerts a divided 
influence ; but in the least developed it is the only 
religion, and it is not possible that another can 
take its place. Unbelief and atheism may tempo- 
rarily overrun a land, but after a time in that 
very soil the religious nature of man will mani- 
fest itself in an astonishing manner. Conclusive 
instances of this have been seen in the history of 
mankind. 

Christianity is identified with the education of Christianity 
the world and with the doctrine of the equality aildmodern 

civilization. 

of man. Whatever may be said of some aspects 
of scientific investigation, it is incontestable that 
there is nothing incompatible between the pursuit 
of science and the most devout and earnest Chris- 
tian living. 

Modern civilization has gone hand in hand with 



power. 



190 The Fundamentals 

the development of Christianity. Whether or not 
Christianity produces civilization, — or at least is 
not incompatible with it, — its identification with 
the forces that rule the world is apparent. 

A judicial estimate of the relation of Christian- 
ity to modern civilization is that it is the chief 
factor therein; and that other great factors have 
generally wrought in harmony with the funda- 
mentals of Christianity, although sometimes with 
considerable friction. 
Propulsive The propulsive power of Christianity in the 

hearts of its votaries has never been permanently 
equaled by any religion whose principles com- 
mitted it to peaceful measures of propagation. 
When men come to a knowledge of the truth 
they find themselves in the possession of the 
greatest good. Under such circumstances par- 
ents can find no peace until their children have 
obtained like precious faith with themselves. 
Nor can children rest without trying to lead their 
parents into a like inestimable experience. None 
who really know the joys of true Christianity can 
be indifferent to the religious condition of their 
friends, or even of others whom they may fre- 
quently meet. Their personal relation to Christ, 
their knowledge of his commands, their desire to 



And Their Contrasts. 191 

do his will, will prompt them to strive to draw 
others to Christ; while the promises which en- 
courage them to such efforts render it impossible 
for one in whose soul the holy fire is burning 
to do otherwise than kindle the flame in other 
hearts. 

The supposition that Christianity is false car- if christian- 
ries with it consequences so awful that the world y ' * ai 
will shrink from entertaining it. If it be false, 
no other system of faith can demand a mo- 
ment's attention; where it exists, it is therefore 
this religion or no religion. Systems of philos- 
ophy are contradictory and without means of 
authentication. Nature is inadequate to reveal 
the chief moral attributes of God. If there has 
been no definite revelation, the most spiritual and 
elevating precepts are without divine sanction; 
the most noble examples are dreams ; the life of 
Jesus becomes incredible, except as a conception 
of genius. 

It cannot be rationally supposed that such reli- 
gion can be rooted out from among men. Those 
who live exclusively in "the high and dry light 
of the understanding" have neither the motive 
nor the power to influence men, for men are 
governed by their hearts as well as by their 



19 2 The Fundamentals 

minds. One truly zealous Christian naturally 
will do more to lead others to Christ than ten 
average opponents of religion will do to prop- 
agate the barren principles of unbelief. The 
manner of the representation of God's truth to 
men includes sentiments, characters, and trag- 
edies which the world will never allow to pass 
out of its memory. That religion can never 
die which contains the parable of the Prodigal 
Son, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the his- 
tory of the penitent thief, and Christ's prayer on 
the cross, "Father, forgive them ; for they know 
not what they do." 
optimism the There is no ground for fear that Christianity 
christia?i*s w ju ever cease j n t j ie ear th. When it was first 

preached the Jews fought against it, and theirs 
was the most vital and persistent faith which 
the world had seen; with undying tenacity it 
holds its votaries in nearly every country in the 
world. They crucified the Founder of Chris- 
tianity and pursued to death his disciples. The 
whole power of Rome, the Iron Empire, the 
mightiest the world had seen, was turned against 
Christ in the interest of paganism and philoso- 
phy; for hundreds of years the conflict waged, 
and millions sealed their faith in their blood. 



privilege. 



And Their Contrasts. 193 

Christianity survived the shock, and gave war- 
rant for the now trite saying that "the blood of 
the martyrs is the seed of the Church/' for the 
whole empire became professedly Christian. 

Every science, at its birth, has been employed The sciences. 
by some to antagonize Christianity. Astronomy, 
almost the first of the sciences, was destined to 
"pluck it up root and branch"; many of the 
professors of Christianity seemed to deny or 
ignore the solar system and the rotation of the 
earth. Astronomy proved it. And though 
Christian leaders did and said many things which 
they ought not, Christianity survived; and ages 
afterwards the great astronomers, Kepler and 
Copernicus; the discoverer of gravitation, the il- 
lustrious Newton; and the father of modern 
science, Francis Bacon, however inconsistent in 
his practice, were Christians. 

Archaeology also was expected to undermine 
seriously faith in the Bible, but instead thereof 
Christianity has derived extraordinary support 
from the labors of these patient students and ex* 
plorers, some of the most celebrated of whom are 
devout Christians. 

Soon after its origin as a science, geology was 
arrayed against the Bible by certain experts. To 

*3 



194 The Fundamentals 

find contradictions of the Bible in the rocks of 
the earth, it was necessary first correctly to inter- 
pret the rocks, correctly to interpret the Bible, 
and correctly to compare the two, a work still 
incomplete. Were this accomplished, and the 
Bible proved to disagree with the records in the 
rocks, it would have no more effect upon the 
vitality and supernatural origin of the spiritual 
truth taught therein than the finding of baser ore 
in connection with a rich vein of gold or silver 
would affect those precious metals. 

If evolution leaves a place for the original 
creative act of a personal God, and for a mani- 
festation in Christ such as evolution never made, 
there is no conflict between evolution and Chris- 
tianity. But if it has no place for a personal 
Creator, or for Christ, as something more than 
man, to the believing Christian it must be an 
"opposition of science falsely so called." 

Those who fancy that Christianity cannot sur- 
vive the materialistic, pantheistic, or agnostic 
tendencies of the age forget the influence of the 
Holy Spirit in general awakenings. These phe- 
Theregenera- nomena are facts of the first magnitude. When 
ttou of the t j ie evan g e ii ca i movement arose in England in 

eighteenth 

century, the early part of the eighteenth century, skepti- 



And Their Contrasts. 195 

cism was rampant and religion a jest ; the Estab- 
lished Church was sleeping; the dissenting com- 
munions were neither numerous nor active; but 
the rise of Methodism without and within the 
Established Church of England, the impetus giv- 
en to other dissenters, and the general return of 
the people to religious lives, are facts which re- 
ceive more and more recognition from history as 
years accumulate. 

Circumstances in the last one hundred and The failure of 
fifty years are alike instructive and confirmatory : J**J 
the rise of French infidelity, and its attempt to 
root up Christianity in France, are unwilling wit- 
nesses. That movement had high-sounding and 
attractive shibboleths, "Liberty, Equality, and 
Fraternity." And to these it added a hatred of 
a corrupt form of Christianity. It beheaded the 
king, shut up the churches, and wrote over the 
cemeteries, "Death is an eternal sleep" ; it even 
set itself to take from the calendar the beneficent 
Sabbath, and extirpate reverence for any belief 
in God. For a century this attempt had been 
preparing, but what was the end thereof? The 
Revolution was suffocated in its own blood, and 
Christianity still exists in France and has to be 
reckoned with in all political and social calcula- 



tian. 



196 The Fundamentals 

tions. The disofficializing it by the French gov- 
ernment is likely to increase its activity and 
moral power. 
n s failure to i n t fe time of the Revolutionary War the 

make this r-r- t • r* a *• « 

country seeds of r rench infidelity were planted in this 
ami- Chris- land. Thomas Paine actually believed that the _ 
"Age of Reason" had come, and that the Bible, 
and especially the incarnation and atonement of 
Christ, would soon be rejected ; and, in his vanity, 
thought that Christianity would be uprooted, — 
and for a time it seemed to many as though such 
might be the result. 

Independence put an end to ecclesiastical domi- 
nation, and many of the churches were torn in 
pieces in the Revolution. But what has been the 
issue? In no other country of the world has 
Christianity prospered as in the United States. 
The various Churches have above thirty million 
communicants and adherents, including more 
than two-thirds of the population. Here both 
Protestantism and Catholicism flourish as no- 
where else in the world. 

We were told that Spiritualism would super- 
sede the gospel, and that the Church would die ; 
it has been but a few years since those boastings ; 
its believers have diminished, its mediums furnish 



And Their Contrasts. 197 

to some a puzzle, and to others amusement, but 
by the vast majority are looked upon with con- 
tempt. 

Against these and the growing independence 
of spirit, and under a republican form of gov- 
ernment, Christianity as a growing force and an 
ever-increasing missionary propaganda has been 
maintained in the world by man's need of con- 
solation, as well as by its adequacy to meet his 
conscious wants, by the zeal of its followers, by 
the simplicity and efficiency of its organization, 
by the hunger and thirst of man for something 
beyond material posessions and sensuous gratifi- 
cation, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

In the early part of 1889 I spent some time at a religious 
Athens, and as the English-speaking residents sirvice tn 

English on 

and travelers were of the opinion that a religious Mars Hill% 
service in English had never been held on Mars 
Hill, an informal committee was raised to ar- 
range for an undenominational meeting on the 
following Sunday at four p.m. Areopagus is 
one of the few sacred places which have never 
been monopolized by the Jews or by either of the 
two great divisions of Christianity (the Latin and 
the Greek) which have disputed for the posses- 
sion of the Eastern world. Though close to the 



198 The Fundamentals 

Acropolis, and very near to the Pnyx, the an- 
cient place of assembly, it is as bare as any des- 
olate hill in the most remote part of the coun- 
try. Before the days of Pericles the Acropolis 
was the religious center of the city, and from 
Mars Hill can be seen most of the ruins that have 
made Athens the wonder of the world and its 
model in architecture and sculpture. Only a few 
yards away is the Parthenon, "the chief glory of 
Athens and, even in its ruins, the most perfect 
specimen of Greek architectural genius." On 
the north side of it lay the market place. It was 
scarce five minutes' walk from the market where 
Paul disputed with the Jews and the philos- 
ophers, and it is generally agreed that probably 
on the side of the hill toward the market Paul 
delivered the sermon recorded in the seventeenth 
chapter of the book of Acts. 

No publicity was given to the fact that a serv- 
ice was to be held, except the distribution to the 
guests at different hotels of information as to 
time and place. At the appointed hour a congre- 
gation in which were represented England, Scot- 
land, five states of the Union, Canada, and seven 
different religious denominations, had assembled. 
At a short distance stood two Greek priests who, 



And Their Contrasts. 199 

with mingled reverence and curiosity, looked 
upon the congregation and listened to the songs, 
the prayers, and the discourse, remaining until 
the apostolic benediction, — practically the same 
in all forms of Christianity, — was pronounced. 

Three Christian communions were represented interdenomi 
by those who conducted the exercises. Principal *^,"X. 
Bancroft, of Andover Academy, a minister of 
the Congregational denomination, read the Scrip- 
tures and offered the first prayer. The closing 
prayer was made by Mr. Mills, a member of the 
Society of Friends, and at that time President 
of Earlham College in Indiana. The delivery of 
the sermon was allotted to me. 

The voices reached the Parthenon, and when 
the assertion was made that "not one human be- 
ing remains to worship the gods in whose honor 
the Parthenon and the magnificent temples and 
monuments whose ruins are gilded by the setting 
sun, were erected — not one !" a wholly unpre- 
meditated effect, more impressive than anything 
else said or sung, was the slow-answering echo, 
from the Parthenon, "Not one/' 

When Paul preached, "some mocked ; and oth- 
ers said, We will hear thee again of this mat- 
ter. So Paul departed from among them. How- 



200 The Fundamentals 

belt certain men clave unto him, and believed: 
among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, 
and a woman named Damaris, and others with 
them." 
its history a That religion must by its inherent forces con- 

prophecy of . , 

permanence. tinue as long as the human race remains, which 
has survived the attacks of the Jews, the as- 
saults of the Roman Empire and all other an- 
cient empires into which it was introduced, and 
(though not incompatible with true philosophy 
and genuine science, or lacking defenders among 
philosophers and scientists) has suffered many 
things of many philosophists and scientists who 
unscientifically classified with facts and principles 
their inadequately supported theories, and has en- 
dured the foolishness of many over-certain theo- 
logians, and fantastic thinkers assuming that ven- 
erable name, and has thriven equally well under 
monarchical and republican forms of government. 

What Christianity claims for itself, its history, 
though often marred by the errors, imperfections, 
and sins of its votaries, confirms. 

"Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which 
cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we 
may serve God acceptably with reverence and 
godly fear." 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



PAQS 

Aborigines, Australian 20 

Religion of 66 

Africa, Religious views in , 70 

"Age of Faith," Dr. Bradford's 4 

Agnosticism, Easy drift toward Atheism 60 

Flint's definition 56 

Murray's Dictionary 57 

Origin of term 56 

Place in Religion for 58 

Romanes definition 57 

Spirit of age favorable to 61 

Archaeology and Christianity 193 

Ariits 127 

Astronomy and Christianity 193 

Atheism, Lord Bacon upon . . 34 

Enemy of mankind 41 

"Fashion" or "fad" 39 

France 41 

Lord Bacon's understanding of 41 

Makes universe hopeless mystery 43 

Profession of not always real 37 

Temptations to 35 

Thomas Paine falsely charged with 34 

Atheist, Varieties of meaning 33 

Exposed by Daniel Wise 38 

Atheistic Pantheism 44 

Ideas under name of Pantheism 45 

Atheists, Speculative 40 

Athens, Religious service there 197 

Atonement 180, 181 

Aztecs, Their advanced ideas. 67 



ii 



204 Index. 

PAGE 

Bancroft, Principal, participates in worship on 

Mars Hill 199 

Bereavement, stimulates to religion 14 

Bible, Key to God's method in 101 

Biographies of good and bad men therein 107 

Human element therein 103 

Progressive revelations therein 108 

Record of miracles therein 104 

Record of prophecy therein 107 

Special books of great worth therein 108 

Bradford, A. H., "Age of Faith" 4 

''Brethren and Sisters of Free Spirit" 130 

Buchanites" 135 

Buckley, Professor Edmund, definition of Religion. 18 

Buddhism, Its doctrines and origin 76 

In China 76 

In Japan 76 

Its divisions 76 



Christ, Teaching concerning wicked 185 

Christian Science 148-168 

Christianity, Widespread area 189 

and Evolution 194 

Distorted forms in early centuries 126-129 

From sixth to twelfth century 128 

Growing force 197 

How maintained 197 

In France 189 

In Great Britain and Ireland 189 

In Holland 189 

In United States 196 

Its propulsive power 190 

Related to education of world 189 

Related to equality of man 187 

Supposition that it is false incredible 191 

Civilization, Modern; Christianity chief factors in. 190 

Compensation in Nature— a fancy 36 



Index. 205 

PAGB 

Comte r 51, 52 

Confucianism, Doctrines, origin of 73 

Union of Agnosticism and Positivism 75 

Creator, Glimpses of 79 

Darwin, definition of religious devotion 21 

Death, most powerful religious teacher 13 

Death rate, not lessened by Faith Healing and 

Christian Science 167, 168 

Dewey, Professor John, summary of Pantheism.. 48 

Distinctions among religions 29 

Doubt, increased by attempts to dissipate it 5 

prevalent in ancient nations 4 

Dowieism i39-*43 

Evil sects in thirteenth century 130 

Evolution, two views 194 

False "Messiahs" 118 

teachers, rise of prophesied 117 

"Fashion" or "fad" of Atheism 39 

Fate of unrighteous 185 

Fetichism, is it a religion ? 67, 68 

Geology and Christianity 193 

Gnostics 126 

God, Law of . . 179 

God, Self-revealing power of the idea of one 84 

chief foundation for faith in personal immor- 
tality 84 

Evidences of His existence 82 

One, creed of Jews, Christians, and Moham- 
medans 89 

sole Eternal Person 80 

God, Spirituality, Unity, Invisibility, Personality.. 178 

Golden Rule 180 

Greece, ancient religions Polytheistic 78 

Greek Philosophy sometimes atheistically pantheistic. 47 



206 Index. 

PAGE 

Haeckel 49 

Harrison, Frederick 51, 55 

Heavens, worship of 69 

Hegel's views of Pantheism 48 

Henry, Professor Joseph, his ground of belief in 

God 81, 82 

Hindoo Pantheism, denies personal Creator 46 

History of Christianity, the prophecy of its per- 
manence 200 

Human freedom 175 

Immortality, Christian's inward evidence 184 

Incarnation 180, 181 

Inconsistencies of abandoned men significant 11 

Infants, saved 186 

Iroquois Indians, religion of 70 

Japan, religions of yy 

Law, of God 179 

Lectures, object of them 7 

Lewes's estimate of Spinoza 45 

Littre, Positivism 54 

Longings for communion with God, Man's 176 

Manes, Followers of 126 

Man's religious nature 175 

Mars Hill, Protestant services in English there 198 

Men judged by their lights 187 

Methodism, without and within Church of England. 195 
Mills, President, participates in worship on Mars 

Hill * 199 

Misrepresentation of Christ's teaching concerning 

the doom of the wicked 185 

Montesquieu on Atheism , 44 

Morley, John, definition of religion 23 

Life of Voltaire 40 

statement of need of revelation 112 



Index. 207 

PAGE 

Mormonism 135-139 

Muggletonians 135 

One God, creed of Jews, Christians, and Moham- 
medans 89 

Oneida Community 132-135 

Optimism, The Christian privilege 192 

Paine, Thomas ; his mistake 196 

Pantheism, denying personality of God practical 

atheism 51 

Hegel's view of 48 

Hindoo, denies personal Creator 46 

identification with Atheism by Haeckel 49 

of David Strauss 48 

Professor John Dewey's characteristics of 48 

Schopenhauer, statement of relation of Panthe- 
ism and Atheism 49 

Peculiar sects 132-135 

Pelagius . 127 

Positivism of Comte 51, 52, 53 

defined by Frederick Harrison 51 

explained by Comte 52 

Harrison's theory of cause of failure 55 

Littre 54 

tendency to atheism 54 

Power of regenerated men . . 182 

Prayer, Christian conception of 183 

for sick, true doctrine of 169 

Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the Unit- 
ed States 196 

Quietists, The 131 

Quillian Foundation, Its purpose 3 

Recoveries under "Faith Healers" and Christian 

Scientists, etc., accounted for 165, 166 

I (pommon limits of pretenders...,,., 167 



208 Index. 

PAGE 

Reformation, many false Christs since 132 

Period preliminary to 129, 130 

The Quietists 131 

Regeneration 181 

of eighteenth century 194 

Religion and Religions, how distinguished 29 

Century's first and third definition 17 

Century's second definition 21 

Characteristics of different religions 27 

Comprehensive definition of 28 

Darwin's definition of 21 

Defined in Lang's "Myth, Ritual, and Religion". 20 

Defined in New Testament 22 

Definitions in Encyclopedia 19 

Derivation of word 16 

Distinctions among religions 29 

Edmund Buckley's definition 18 

How developed 25 

John Morley's definition 23 

Necessity of shown by man's ignorance, help- 
lessness, and longing 15 

Need of, unconsciously revealed 12 

Religion of Friendly Islands 66 

Indians of North America 66 

New Caledonians 66 

New Hebrides 66 

Scientific study of 24 

Trench's definition 22 

Universality of 8 

Religions and Religion, How distinguished 29 

Great power of 9, 10 

Many false 9 

Sources of their power. 11 

tolerated by Roman Government 10 

Revelation, a rational expectation 90 

admits of study, and aid to private devotion... no 

Bible a special ,,, v . ,,..,, , ,.,-,, . 92 



Index. 209 

PAGE 

Revelation, Conditions of genuine. 177 

disseminated by publication and translation 109 

John Morley's statement of need of 112 

Modes, By signs or symbols 94 

Modes, Few inspired in each generation 98 

Modes, possible to God 93 

Permanent standard of Moral and Religious 

Truth 1 10 

Portraiture of the life and character of Jesus., in 
Protection against priestcraft and superstition.. 11 1 

Theory that all men are inspired 96 

Revolution, American 196 

French 195 

Roman Catholicism in United States 196 

Rome, Ancient religion polytheistic 78 

Russo-Greek Church, bulwark of State 9 

Sabellius 127 

Sandford and Shiloh 143-148 

Schopenhauer, relation of Pantheism and Atheism. 49 

Semitic races, old religion of 69 

Shakers 132 

Southcote, Joanna 135 

Spiritualism, its boastings and failure 196 

Time, present portentous 6 

Totemism, one grade above Fetichism 68 

Trench's definition of Religion 22 

Unbelief may react to faith 5 

Unrighteous, their fate 185 

Van Dyke, Henry, "Gospel for Age of Doubt".. 3 

Waldenses, Rise of 129 

Warnings, Essential to permanence of Christianity. 188 

14 



2io Index. 

PAOE 

Zoroastrianism, how allied to India 72 

its early system 71 

its modifications 73 

its origin 71 

Max Muller's views 72 

relation of Parsees to 72, 73 



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